Atlético de Madrid vs. Celtic

In the case of Alex McLeish’s appointment as Scotland manager, it seems - if one may plunder an immortal line from Casablanca – that destiny has taken a hand. The Tartan Army remain to be persuaded, to judge by the predominantly negative social media reaction to the 59-year-old’s return to the job he quit in 2007 to move to Birmingham City, but McLeish does not see himself as third choice, although Michael O’Neill and Walter Smith rejected advances by the Scottish Football Association before the governing body turned to him. “It feels a bit surreal but I believe I’m the guy for the job,” McLeish said. “When I looked at other guys who have gone back to take charge of their national teams for a second time - like Dick Advocaat and Louis Van Gaal - I thought ‘Yeah, that could be on for me some time’. “The opportunity arose and I felt I had to go for it, because I believe it was my destiny.” Asked how he had reacted to the invitations extended to O’Neill and Smith in the aftermath of Gordon Strachan’s departure, along with their subsequent rejections, McLeish said: “One was ‘Ya beauty!’, the next one was ‘Oh, Walter is getting it.’ “When Walter abdicated I thought, ‘I’m in again’ but, honestly, I felt it was fate. It was meant to happen. Michael was the first choice, let’s not make any bones about that, but I have always felt I was the right guy to be the next Scotland coach.” Scotland’s first outing under McLeish will be the home friendly with Costa Rica on March 23 but he faces formidable opposition from Tartan Army supporters who have expressed disapproval of his decision to move to the Premier League in England 11 years ago, in the aftermath of the Scots’ narrow failure to qualify for Euro 2008. “Listen, of course I can understand it,” he said. “You get divided opinion. The only way to change it is by performing well and getting good results. That is the cure for dissent. “I had seven months to wait before the next tournament started. I would have been a professional supporter, watching all the games, watching all the players up and do the country, but I really missed the day to day stuff. “There was an element of thinking that I was still young enough to go and take that challenge on. To be asked to go to the Premier League is an ambition that a lot of managers would have taken, probably the majority. “If we had just qualified there is no way that I would have left. I would have seen us right through to the finals, ambition or not. “I would probably have been offered something after the finals. I was so gutted that we missed it by a whisker. Faddy (James McFadden) had a wee chance at 1-1 in the final qualifier against Italy, when the ball came across the box and he slid at it. Your life flashes in front of your eyes.” With no active interest in this summer’s World Cup finals and the Euro 2020 qualifiers not scheduled to begin until March next year, McLeish will have to get the best from a programme of six friendlies and two home-and-away Nations League meetings with Albania and Israel. His political skills will be tested by the demands of two challenge matches arranged for the close season, one against Peru in Lima on May 29 and the other against Mexico in the Azteca Stadium on June 2. Celtic provided the core of Scotland’s strength during Strachan’s unbeaten run of seven games last year, with Craig Gordon, Kieran Tierney, Stuart Armstrong, Scott Brown, James Forrest and Leigh Griffiths all named for the final World Cup qualifiers against Slovakia and Slovenia. Celtic, however, completed a clean sweep of the domestic honours last season and are on course to repeat the feat but must negotiate four round of Champions League qualifiers if they win the Scottish title again this time around. McLeish was unveiled on Friday at Hampden Park Credit: Getty Images The prospect of sending players to South America after another draining club season has not enchanted Brendan Rodgers, the Celtic manager. McLeish acknowledged the concerns, while comparing current circumstances with his own career as a central defender with Aberdeen. “Back in my day if we had been promised a trip to Peru and Mexico in the summer we’d have been ecstatic,” he said. “It would have been, ‘Hallelujah, brilliant’ but, yeah, I can understand the clubs’ stance with the way European football is now mapped out. “I do understand that they maybe feel it wasn’t appropriate timing, but it’s there, we are going to go and it may be a good opportunity for other players. We are borrowing their players to turn out for the national team. “We have to address that nearer the time. I have to have a rapport with the clubs. We will talk, we’ll communicate and see what kind of answers we get.” McLeish has already begun the task of assembling a backroom staff – “I’ve made some phone calls and I’m hopeful of announcing that maybe some time next week” – before he returned to his opening theme. “I feel I’m a better manager now. The common-sense factor grows and you see things from a different way. In terms of destiny, I just feel it’s the right time for me.”

In the case of Alex McLeish’s appointment as Scotland manager, it seems - if one may plunder an immortal line from Casablanca – that destiny has taken a hand. The Tartan Army remain to be persuaded, to judge by the predominantly negative social media reaction to the 59-year-old’s return to the job he quit in 2007 to move to Birmingham City, but McLeish does not see himself as third choice, although Michael O’Neill and Walter Smith rejected advances by the Scottish Football Association before the governing body turned to him. “It feels a bit surreal but I believe I’m the guy for the job,” McLeish said. “When I looked at other guys who have gone back to take charge of their national teams for a second time - like Dick Advocaat and Louis Van Gaal - I thought ‘Yeah, that could be on for me some time’. “The opportunity arose and I felt I had to go for it, because I believe it was my destiny.” Asked how he had reacted to the invitations extended to O’Neill and Smith in the aftermath of Gordon Strachan’s departure, along with their subsequent rejections, McLeish said: “One was ‘Ya beauty!’, the next one was ‘Oh, Walter is getting it.’ “When Walter abdicated I thought, ‘I’m in again’ but, honestly, I felt it was fate. It was meant to happen. Michael was the first choice, let’s not make any bones about that, but I have always felt I was the right guy to be the next Scotland coach.” Scotland’s first outing under McLeish will be the home friendly with Costa Rica on March 23 but he faces formidable opposition from Tartan Army supporters who have expressed disapproval of his decision to move to the Premier League in England 11 years ago, in the aftermath of the Scots’ narrow failure to qualify for Euro 2008. “Listen, of course I can understand it,” he said. “You get divided opinion. The only way to change it is by performing well and getting good results. That is the cure for dissent. “I had seven months to wait before the next tournament started. I would have been a professional supporter, watching all the games, watching all the players up and do the country, but I really missed the day to day stuff. “There was an element of thinking that I was still young enough to go and take that challenge on. To be asked to go to the Premier League is an ambition that a lot of managers would have taken, probably the majority. “If we had just qualified there is no way that I would have left. I would have seen us right through to the finals, ambition or not. “I would probably have been offered something after the finals. I was so gutted that we missed it by a whisker. Faddy (James McFadden) had a wee chance at 1-1 in the final qualifier against Italy, when the ball came across the box and he slid at it. Your life flashes in front of your eyes.” With no active interest in this summer’s World Cup finals and the Euro 2020 qualifiers not scheduled to begin until March next year, McLeish will have to get the best from a programme of six friendlies and two home-and-away Nations League meetings with Albania and Israel. His political skills will be tested by the demands of two challenge matches arranged for the close season, one against Peru in Lima on May 29 and the other against Mexico in the Azteca Stadium on June 2. Celtic provided the core of Scotland’s strength during Strachan’s unbeaten run of seven games last year, with Craig Gordon, Kieran Tierney, Stuart Armstrong, Scott Brown, James Forrest and Leigh Griffiths all named for the final World Cup qualifiers against Slovakia and Slovenia. Celtic, however, completed a clean sweep of the domestic honours last season and are on course to repeat the feat but must negotiate four round of Champions League qualifiers if they win the Scottish title again this time around. McLeish was unveiled on Friday at Hampden Park Credit: Getty Images The prospect of sending players to South America after another draining club season has not enchanted Brendan Rodgers, the Celtic manager. McLeish acknowledged the concerns, while comparing current circumstances with his own career as a central defender with Aberdeen. “Back in my day if we had been promised a trip to Peru and Mexico in the summer we’d have been ecstatic,” he said. “It would have been, ‘Hallelujah, brilliant’ but, yeah, I can understand the clubs’ stance with the way European football is now mapped out. “I do understand that they maybe feel it wasn’t appropriate timing, but it’s there, we are going to go and it may be a good opportunity for other players. We are borrowing their players to turn out for the national team. “We have to address that nearer the time. I have to have a rapport with the clubs. We will talk, we’ll communicate and see what kind of answers we get.” McLeish has already begun the task of assembling a backroom staff – “I’ve made some phone calls and I’m hopeful of announcing that maybe some time next week” – before he returned to his opening theme. “I feel I’m a better manager now. The common-sense factor grows and you see things from a different way. In terms of destiny, I just feel it’s the right time for me.”

The 60 best holidays in France for 2018

France summer booking guide Beach Villa Culture Food Activity Cruise Planning a holiday to France? Read our guide to the best regions, including expert advice on where to go on the Côte-d'Azur and Aquitaine Coast, in Provence, Languedoc-Roussillon, Brittany, Normandy, Burgundy and the Dordogne as well as the best operators and booking details. By Anthony Peregrine, Telegraph Travel France expert. Click on the tabs above for our expert's picks of the best beach, villa, culture, food and drink, activity and cruise holidays in France. We are reliably schizophrenic about the French. This is understandable. They are both our next-door neighbours, and hereditary foes. Because we live so close, their supposed foibles - arrogance, slipperiness, dubious morality - are amplified. And yet, and yet, we can't keep out of their country. Clearly, and like a classy courtesan, France is so damned seductive that she lures us away from fiercely-held principles. You can see how she might. The most diverse country in Europe runs from celebrated mountains to the continent's finest coast via everything else in-between. Great rivers run hither and yon, forest covers 28 per cent of the landscape and there's hardly anyone about. Amboise, in the Loire Credit: stevanzz - Fotolia More Telegraph Travel expert guides For roughly the same population, France covers more than twice the area of the UK. The few there are have filled the place with the first-class food and wine, châteaux (not all built to fight the English) and variegated culture. In few other countries can you go, as I did four summers ago, from a bull-running festival to major Signac exhibition in under 25 minutes. Villages remain complete unto themselves, rather than urban out-reach communities. They will have proper bakeries. The chain store might still be the ironmonger's. The mayor will take him(her)self very seriously. As importantly, and despite (or because of?) its Jacobin impulse to centralisation, France has retained marked regional identities. The country covers the West European spectrum, from Flemish and Germanic in the north to Latin in the south. You can holiday in a different France every time you go. But how do you choose where? Frances 20 most beautiful villages You might start on the Côte-d'Azur, if for no other reason than that well-bred Britons have been doing so for 200 years. We were the first to apply manners, fashion and decadence to the natural splendour (mountains dropping to the sea; unfiltered light; creeks; you've seen the photos). Glamour remains - the Negresco Hotel in Nice, the Caves-du-Roy night-club in St Tropez - even though, in places, the coast fills up pretty full these days. (What did you expect? You'd have it all to yourself?) The contemporary Azurean talent is, in fact, to project itself as an arty jet-set destination while actually catering for Everyman. Prices need be no more punishing than in Calais. (My favourite restaurant in Nice, the Voyageur Nissart, has full-meal menus from £14.) And out-running the crowds is a cinch. Head for the Corniches des Maures or de l'Esterel, or the hills behind Menton and Nice. The twist of a hairpin spins you from glitz to an older, rockier region where mojitos are things you spray against. How to avoid the crowds in Provence The same is true in Provence. It may be standing-room-only in the cultured A-team towns - Aix, Arles and Avignon - but you stand alone on the Lure mountain, or the Vaucluse Plateau. Naturally, the region slides easily into soft-focus - sensual markets, apéritifs by the pool, Sisteron lamb on a village terrace - but, at base, it's a hard-stone rugged world which has survived worse than tourism. It's tougher yet, and the coast very much flatter, across the Rhône in Languedoc-Roussillon. No-one came here until the 1960s, when France decided it needed its own Costa, to stop French people going to Spain. Fishing ports were adapted uncertainly. New-build holiday resorts went up - notably, La Grande Motte, whose ziggurats and pyramids describe exactly what 1960s planners thought the future would look like. Provence: no other region in Europe, not even Tuscany, has so nourished our dreams and sensual demands Credit: Newmarket Holidays Few would argue that all this is uniformly charming, but the sandy beaches are endless, the sea-food terrific, and few spots on earth have more happy families-per-square-metre than Le Grau-du-Roi or Argelès. The hinterland is quite different, vinelands ceding to sun-roasted hills overlain with garrigue and memories of religious massacre. Meanwhile, the Aquitaine Coast - Soulac down to Hendaye via Cap Ferret, Arcachon and Biarritz - is also flat with infinite beaches, but pounded by the Atlantic. The power renders the Med idle by comparison, tossing surfers about gratifyingly. In the deep south, the Basques may, on occasion, be uppity - but they're brilliant when singing, cooking axoa veal stew or sharing their red and white villages, and green Pyrenean hills. The north Brittany, too, can get out of hand. It did so in autumn 2013, when almost everyone took to the streets to protest about pretty much everything. The Bretons' is a strong identity, fashioned by rocks, onions , the sea and the swirl of Celtic culture - itself wonderful when playing the harp and dancing, but frankly bonkers at its mystical extremes. Both north and south, but especially north - from the Pays-des-Abers to the Pink Granite coast and on to St Malo - the Breton coast stirs like few others. A word of advice, though: Breton crêpes are overrated. Go for the Cancale oysters. It is a serious Breton regret that the Mont-Saint-Michel - the sublime rock-island abbey apparently landed from a more majestic dimension - should be just over the border in Normandy. But the Normans deserve some luck, after the clattering they took in summer 1944. Seventy years on, the D-Day beaches both retain an emotional impact and ring with the laughter of children, which is as it should be. Mont Saint-Michel, Normandy Credit: Getty Pre-war, the Normandy coast was best known for the cliffs at Etretat - sculpted by gods with time on their hands - the Parisian chic of Granville and Deauville, and the presence of almost every Impressionist you care to name. Le Havre and Honfleur overflowed with Monet and similar. But my very favourite Norman slice is the inland Pays-d'Auge, where half-timbered villages punctuate the rich green, double-cream countryside, where there are cows in bountiful pastures, and calvados in my glass. Deepest Burgundy I relax similarly into the greys, greens and gentle slopes of Burgundy - "a landscape of slow civilisation," as someone once said, correctly. The region long ago retired from medieval eminence, both religious and temporal, to play to its real strengths: making great wines, raising Charolais cattle and growing a little portly. Being plump became a duty imposed by history. Especially in the Côtes-de-Nuit and Côtes-de-Beaune, villages ripened by the wine trade seem in permanent readiness for a pageant. Some of the loveliest also line the Nivernais canal - as if painted into place - which makes Burgundy cruising an unexpected pleasure. Canal speeds are about right for the region, too. Life moves slowly in Beaune Credit: Getty And so, south-west to the Dordogne, which is not, as often supposed, a summer-house extension of the Home Counties. Granted, it gets many British visitors, re-taking, gîte by gîte, what we lost in the Hundred Years War. Try getting to Sarlat's Saturday market after 10am and, such is the pressure of visitor cars, you might as well park in Paris. Throngs of canoeists may also turn the Dordogne river into a watery M25. But, as in Provence, a turn of the wheel distances the throngs for a mainly mellow landscape of old-fashioned farming, meaty meals, woodland and arcaded village squares. The place was by-passed for centuries by mainstream France - which is why it now looks so untouched. That said, pre-historic men were jolly content here - notably along the Vézère valley, where they gathered in abundance, and not just to paint on cave walls. A few millennia on, so are we. But (another word of advice): please sort out your attitude to foie gras before arriving. In the Dordogne, it crops up everywhere. The 60 best holidays for 2017 For our pick of the best trips, see our individual sections below: Top 10 beach holidays in France Top 10 activity and adventure holidays in France Top 10 art and culture holidays in France Top 10 villa holidays in France Top 10 food and wine holidays in France Top 10 cruises to France Tour operators For advice on tour operators, see our individual sections below: France summer holiday guide: beach breaks France summer holiday guide: villas and apartments France summer holiday guide: art and culture France summer holiday guide: activity and adventure France summer holiday guide: food and wine France summer holiday guide: cruises The first colour photographs of France Getting there Crossing the Channel For cheapest fares, research and book on operators' websites, and for peak season travel book ahead, especially on longer crossings. Read our full guide to cross-channel ferries to France Eurotunnel (0844 335 3535; eurotunnel.com) The Folkestone-Calais car shuttle train service is the fastest way to cross the Channel, and services are unaffected by the weather. However, fares are generally higher than those offered by the ferry operators on short crossings. P&O Ferries (0871 664 2121; poferries.com) Dover-Calais. DFDS Seaways (0871 574 7235 (for Dover-Calais enquiries); dfdsseaways.co.uk) Dover-Dunkirk, Dover-Calais, Newhaven-Dieppe. Brittany Ferries (0871 244 1400; brittany-ferries.co.uk) Portsmouth to Le Havre, Caen, Cherbourg, St Malo; Poole-Cherbourg; Plymouth to Roscoff and, winter only, to St Malo. Seasonal fastcraft services Portsmouth-Cherbourg; conventional ferries on other routes. Condor Ferries (0845 609 1024; condorferries.com) Fastcraft services from Poole to St Malo via the Channel Islands. Roscoff, Brittany Credit: Boris Stroujko - Fotolia By train Eurostar (eurostar.com) operates year-round services from London and Kent to Paris, Calais, Lille and Disneyland Paris. A new year-round service also operates to Lyon, Avignon and Marseille. Through fares are possible from regional UK stations, and to many other French cities. Voyages-sncf.com (0844 848 5848; voyages-sncf.com), formerly Rail Europe, can book trips combining Eurostar with TGV and local services, any rail journey within France, and French rail passes. For all train journeys, book well ahead for cheapest fares - Eurostar's booking horizon is up to six months on major services (up to nine months for Disneyland Paris). Before booking, refer to seat61.com for invaluable advice on French train travel. The best hotels in France By air Use skyscanner.net for who flies where and fare comparisons. Before booking, also calculate extra charges for checking in bags and so forth. By coach For often cheap fares to Paris, Lille and sometimes other French destinations, contact Eurolines (eurolines.co.uk), Megabus (uk.megabus.com) and OUIBUS (uk.ouibus.com). Getting there advice by Fred Mawer More Telegraph Travel expert guides Follow Telegraph Travel on Twitter France: summer holiday planner

The 60 best holidays in France for 2018

France summer booking guide Beach Villa Culture Food Activity Cruise Planning a holiday to France? Read our guide to the best regions, including expert advice on where to go on the Côte-d'Azur and Aquitaine Coast, in Provence, Languedoc-Roussillon, Brittany, Normandy, Burgundy and the Dordogne as well as the best operators and booking details. By Anthony Peregrine, Telegraph Travel France expert. Click on the tabs above for our expert's picks of the best beach, villa, culture, food and drink, activity and cruise holidays in France. We are reliably schizophrenic about the French. This is understandable. They are both our next-door neighbours, and hereditary foes. Because we live so close, their supposed foibles - arrogance, slipperiness, dubious morality - are amplified. And yet, and yet, we can't keep out of their country. Clearly, and like a classy courtesan, France is so damned seductive that she lures us away from fiercely-held principles. You can see how she might. The most diverse country in Europe runs from celebrated mountains to the continent's finest coast via everything else in-between. Great rivers run hither and yon, forest covers 28 per cent of the landscape and there's hardly anyone about. Amboise, in the Loire Credit: stevanzz - Fotolia More Telegraph Travel expert guides For roughly the same population, France covers more than twice the area of the UK. The few there are have filled the place with the first-class food and wine, châteaux (not all built to fight the English) and variegated culture. In few other countries can you go, as I did four summers ago, from a bull-running festival to major Signac exhibition in under 25 minutes. Villages remain complete unto themselves, rather than urban out-reach communities. They will have proper bakeries. The chain store might still be the ironmonger's. The mayor will take him(her)self very seriously. As importantly, and despite (or because of?) its Jacobin impulse to centralisation, France has retained marked regional identities. The country covers the West European spectrum, from Flemish and Germanic in the north to Latin in the south. You can holiday in a different France every time you go. But how do you choose where? Frances 20 most beautiful villages You might start on the Côte-d'Azur, if for no other reason than that well-bred Britons have been doing so for 200 years. We were the first to apply manners, fashion and decadence to the natural splendour (mountains dropping to the sea; unfiltered light; creeks; you've seen the photos). Glamour remains - the Negresco Hotel in Nice, the Caves-du-Roy night-club in St Tropez - even though, in places, the coast fills up pretty full these days. (What did you expect? You'd have it all to yourself?) The contemporary Azurean talent is, in fact, to project itself as an arty jet-set destination while actually catering for Everyman. Prices need be no more punishing than in Calais. (My favourite restaurant in Nice, the Voyageur Nissart, has full-meal menus from £14.) And out-running the crowds is a cinch. Head for the Corniches des Maures or de l'Esterel, or the hills behind Menton and Nice. The twist of a hairpin spins you from glitz to an older, rockier region where mojitos are things you spray against. How to avoid the crowds in Provence The same is true in Provence. It may be standing-room-only in the cultured A-team towns - Aix, Arles and Avignon - but you stand alone on the Lure mountain, or the Vaucluse Plateau. Naturally, the region slides easily into soft-focus - sensual markets, apéritifs by the pool, Sisteron lamb on a village terrace - but, at base, it's a hard-stone rugged world which has survived worse than tourism. It's tougher yet, and the coast very much flatter, across the Rhône in Languedoc-Roussillon. No-one came here until the 1960s, when France decided it needed its own Costa, to stop French people going to Spain. Fishing ports were adapted uncertainly. New-build holiday resorts went up - notably, La Grande Motte, whose ziggurats and pyramids describe exactly what 1960s planners thought the future would look like. Provence: no other region in Europe, not even Tuscany, has so nourished our dreams and sensual demands Credit: Newmarket Holidays Few would argue that all this is uniformly charming, but the sandy beaches are endless, the sea-food terrific, and few spots on earth have more happy families-per-square-metre than Le Grau-du-Roi or Argelès. The hinterland is quite different, vinelands ceding to sun-roasted hills overlain with garrigue and memories of religious massacre. Meanwhile, the Aquitaine Coast - Soulac down to Hendaye via Cap Ferret, Arcachon and Biarritz - is also flat with infinite beaches, but pounded by the Atlantic. The power renders the Med idle by comparison, tossing surfers about gratifyingly. In the deep south, the Basques may, on occasion, be uppity - but they're brilliant when singing, cooking axoa veal stew or sharing their red and white villages, and green Pyrenean hills. The north Brittany, too, can get out of hand. It did so in autumn 2013, when almost everyone took to the streets to protest about pretty much everything. The Bretons' is a strong identity, fashioned by rocks, onions , the sea and the swirl of Celtic culture - itself wonderful when playing the harp and dancing, but frankly bonkers at its mystical extremes. Both north and south, but especially north - from the Pays-des-Abers to the Pink Granite coast and on to St Malo - the Breton coast stirs like few others. A word of advice, though: Breton crêpes are overrated. Go for the Cancale oysters. It is a serious Breton regret that the Mont-Saint-Michel - the sublime rock-island abbey apparently landed from a more majestic dimension - should be just over the border in Normandy. But the Normans deserve some luck, after the clattering they took in summer 1944. Seventy years on, the D-Day beaches both retain an emotional impact and ring with the laughter of children, which is as it should be. Mont Saint-Michel, Normandy Credit: Getty Pre-war, the Normandy coast was best known for the cliffs at Etretat - sculpted by gods with time on their hands - the Parisian chic of Granville and Deauville, and the presence of almost every Impressionist you care to name. Le Havre and Honfleur overflowed with Monet and similar. But my very favourite Norman slice is the inland Pays-d'Auge, where half-timbered villages punctuate the rich green, double-cream countryside, where there are cows in bountiful pastures, and calvados in my glass. Deepest Burgundy I relax similarly into the greys, greens and gentle slopes of Burgundy - "a landscape of slow civilisation," as someone once said, correctly. The region long ago retired from medieval eminence, both religious and temporal, to play to its real strengths: making great wines, raising Charolais cattle and growing a little portly. Being plump became a duty imposed by history. Especially in the Côtes-de-Nuit and Côtes-de-Beaune, villages ripened by the wine trade seem in permanent readiness for a pageant. Some of the loveliest also line the Nivernais canal - as if painted into place - which makes Burgundy cruising an unexpected pleasure. Canal speeds are about right for the region, too. Life moves slowly in Beaune Credit: Getty And so, south-west to the Dordogne, which is not, as often supposed, a summer-house extension of the Home Counties. Granted, it gets many British visitors, re-taking, gîte by gîte, what we lost in the Hundred Years War. Try getting to Sarlat's Saturday market after 10am and, such is the pressure of visitor cars, you might as well park in Paris. Throngs of canoeists may also turn the Dordogne river into a watery M25. But, as in Provence, a turn of the wheel distances the throngs for a mainly mellow landscape of old-fashioned farming, meaty meals, woodland and arcaded village squares. The place was by-passed for centuries by mainstream France - which is why it now looks so untouched. That said, pre-historic men were jolly content here - notably along the Vézère valley, where they gathered in abundance, and not just to paint on cave walls. A few millennia on, so are we. But (another word of advice): please sort out your attitude to foie gras before arriving. In the Dordogne, it crops up everywhere. The 60 best holidays for 2017 For our pick of the best trips, see our individual sections below: Top 10 beach holidays in France Top 10 activity and adventure holidays in France Top 10 art and culture holidays in France Top 10 villa holidays in France Top 10 food and wine holidays in France Top 10 cruises to France Tour operators For advice on tour operators, see our individual sections below: France summer holiday guide: beach breaks France summer holiday guide: villas and apartments France summer holiday guide: art and culture France summer holiday guide: activity and adventure France summer holiday guide: food and wine France summer holiday guide: cruises The first colour photographs of France Getting there Crossing the Channel For cheapest fares, research and book on operators' websites, and for peak season travel book ahead, especially on longer crossings. Read our full guide to cross-channel ferries to France Eurotunnel (0844 335 3535; eurotunnel.com) The Folkestone-Calais car shuttle train service is the fastest way to cross the Channel, and services are unaffected by the weather. However, fares are generally higher than those offered by the ferry operators on short crossings. P&O Ferries (0871 664 2121; poferries.com) Dover-Calais. DFDS Seaways (0871 574 7235 (for Dover-Calais enquiries); dfdsseaways.co.uk) Dover-Dunkirk, Dover-Calais, Newhaven-Dieppe. Brittany Ferries (0871 244 1400; brittany-ferries.co.uk) Portsmouth to Le Havre, Caen, Cherbourg, St Malo; Poole-Cherbourg; Plymouth to Roscoff and, winter only, to St Malo. Seasonal fastcraft services Portsmouth-Cherbourg; conventional ferries on other routes. Condor Ferries (0845 609 1024; condorferries.com) Fastcraft services from Poole to St Malo via the Channel Islands. Roscoff, Brittany Credit: Boris Stroujko - Fotolia By train Eurostar (eurostar.com) operates year-round services from London and Kent to Paris, Calais, Lille and Disneyland Paris. A new year-round service also operates to Lyon, Avignon and Marseille. Through fares are possible from regional UK stations, and to many other French cities. Voyages-sncf.com (0844 848 5848; voyages-sncf.com), formerly Rail Europe, can book trips combining Eurostar with TGV and local services, any rail journey within France, and French rail passes. For all train journeys, book well ahead for cheapest fares - Eurostar's booking horizon is up to six months on major services (up to nine months for Disneyland Paris). Before booking, refer to seat61.com for invaluable advice on French train travel. The best hotels in France By air Use skyscanner.net for who flies where and fare comparisons. Before booking, also calculate extra charges for checking in bags and so forth. By coach For often cheap fares to Paris, Lille and sometimes other French destinations, contact Eurolines (eurolines.co.uk), Megabus (uk.megabus.com) and OUIBUS (uk.ouibus.com). Getting there advice by Fred Mawer More Telegraph Travel expert guides Follow Telegraph Travel on Twitter France: summer holiday planner

The 60 best holidays in France for 2018

France summer booking guide Beach Villa Culture Food Activity Cruise Planning a holiday to France? Read our guide to the best regions, including expert advice on where to go on the Côte-d'Azur and Aquitaine Coast, in Provence, Languedoc-Roussillon, Brittany, Normandy, Burgundy and the Dordogne as well as the best operators and booking details. By Anthony Peregrine, Telegraph Travel France expert. Click on the tabs above for our expert's picks of the best beach, villa, culture, food and drink, activity and cruise holidays in France. We are reliably schizophrenic about the French. This is understandable. They are both our next-door neighbours, and hereditary foes. Because we live so close, their supposed foibles - arrogance, slipperiness, dubious morality - are amplified. And yet, and yet, we can't keep out of their country. Clearly, and like a classy courtesan, France is so damned seductive that she lures us away from fiercely-held principles. You can see how she might. The most diverse country in Europe runs from celebrated mountains to the continent's finest coast via everything else in-between. Great rivers run hither and yon, forest covers 28 per cent of the landscape and there's hardly anyone about. Amboise, in the Loire Credit: stevanzz - Fotolia More Telegraph Travel expert guides For roughly the same population, France covers more than twice the area of the UK. The few there are have filled the place with the first-class food and wine, châteaux (not all built to fight the English) and variegated culture. In few other countries can you go, as I did four summers ago, from a bull-running festival to major Signac exhibition in under 25 minutes. Villages remain complete unto themselves, rather than urban out-reach communities. They will have proper bakeries. The chain store might still be the ironmonger's. The mayor will take him(her)self very seriously. As importantly, and despite (or because of?) its Jacobin impulse to centralisation, France has retained marked regional identities. The country covers the West European spectrum, from Flemish and Germanic in the north to Latin in the south. You can holiday in a different France every time you go. But how do you choose where? Frances 20 most beautiful villages You might start on the Côte-d'Azur, if for no other reason than that well-bred Britons have been doing so for 200 years. We were the first to apply manners, fashion and decadence to the natural splendour (mountains dropping to the sea; unfiltered light; creeks; you've seen the photos). Glamour remains - the Negresco Hotel in Nice, the Caves-du-Roy night-club in St Tropez - even though, in places, the coast fills up pretty full these days. (What did you expect? You'd have it all to yourself?) The contemporary Azurean talent is, in fact, to project itself as an arty jet-set destination while actually catering for Everyman. Prices need be no more punishing than in Calais. (My favourite restaurant in Nice, the Voyageur Nissart, has full-meal menus from £14.) And out-running the crowds is a cinch. Head for the Corniches des Maures or de l'Esterel, or the hills behind Menton and Nice. The twist of a hairpin spins you from glitz to an older, rockier region where mojitos are things you spray against. How to avoid the crowds in Provence The same is true in Provence. It may be standing-room-only in the cultured A-team towns - Aix, Arles and Avignon - but you stand alone on the Lure mountain, or the Vaucluse Plateau. Naturally, the region slides easily into soft-focus - sensual markets, apéritifs by the pool, Sisteron lamb on a village terrace - but, at base, it's a hard-stone rugged world which has survived worse than tourism. It's tougher yet, and the coast very much flatter, across the Rhône in Languedoc-Roussillon. No-one came here until the 1960s, when France decided it needed its own Costa, to stop French people going to Spain. Fishing ports were adapted uncertainly. New-build holiday resorts went up - notably, La Grande Motte, whose ziggurats and pyramids describe exactly what 1960s planners thought the future would look like. Provence: no other region in Europe, not even Tuscany, has so nourished our dreams and sensual demands Credit: Newmarket Holidays Few would argue that all this is uniformly charming, but the sandy beaches are endless, the sea-food terrific, and few spots on earth have more happy families-per-square-metre than Le Grau-du-Roi or Argelès. The hinterland is quite different, vinelands ceding to sun-roasted hills overlain with garrigue and memories of religious massacre. Meanwhile, the Aquitaine Coast - Soulac down to Hendaye via Cap Ferret, Arcachon and Biarritz - is also flat with infinite beaches, but pounded by the Atlantic. The power renders the Med idle by comparison, tossing surfers about gratifyingly. In the deep south, the Basques may, on occasion, be uppity - but they're brilliant when singing, cooking axoa veal stew or sharing their red and white villages, and green Pyrenean hills. The north Brittany, too, can get out of hand. It did so in autumn 2013, when almost everyone took to the streets to protest about pretty much everything. The Bretons' is a strong identity, fashioned by rocks, onions , the sea and the swirl of Celtic culture - itself wonderful when playing the harp and dancing, but frankly bonkers at its mystical extremes. Both north and south, but especially north - from the Pays-des-Abers to the Pink Granite coast and on to St Malo - the Breton coast stirs like few others. A word of advice, though: Breton crêpes are overrated. Go for the Cancale oysters. It is a serious Breton regret that the Mont-Saint-Michel - the sublime rock-island abbey apparently landed from a more majestic dimension - should be just over the border in Normandy. But the Normans deserve some luck, after the clattering they took in summer 1944. Seventy years on, the D-Day beaches both retain an emotional impact and ring with the laughter of children, which is as it should be. Mont Saint-Michel, Normandy Credit: Getty Pre-war, the Normandy coast was best known for the cliffs at Etretat - sculpted by gods with time on their hands - the Parisian chic of Granville and Deauville, and the presence of almost every Impressionist you care to name. Le Havre and Honfleur overflowed with Monet and similar. But my very favourite Norman slice is the inland Pays-d'Auge, where half-timbered villages punctuate the rich green, double-cream countryside, where there are cows in bountiful pastures, and calvados in my glass. Deepest Burgundy I relax similarly into the greys, greens and gentle slopes of Burgundy - "a landscape of slow civilisation," as someone once said, correctly. The region long ago retired from medieval eminence, both religious and temporal, to play to its real strengths: making great wines, raising Charolais cattle and growing a little portly. Being plump became a duty imposed by history. Especially in the Côtes-de-Nuit and Côtes-de-Beaune, villages ripened by the wine trade seem in permanent readiness for a pageant. Some of the loveliest also line the Nivernais canal - as if painted into place - which makes Burgundy cruising an unexpected pleasure. Canal speeds are about right for the region, too. Life moves slowly in Beaune Credit: Getty And so, south-west to the Dordogne, which is not, as often supposed, a summer-house extension of the Home Counties. Granted, it gets many British visitors, re-taking, gîte by gîte, what we lost in the Hundred Years War. Try getting to Sarlat's Saturday market after 10am and, such is the pressure of visitor cars, you might as well park in Paris. Throngs of canoeists may also turn the Dordogne river into a watery M25. But, as in Provence, a turn of the wheel distances the throngs for a mainly mellow landscape of old-fashioned farming, meaty meals, woodland and arcaded village squares. The place was by-passed for centuries by mainstream France - which is why it now looks so untouched. That said, pre-historic men were jolly content here - notably along the Vézère valley, where they gathered in abundance, and not just to paint on cave walls. A few millennia on, so are we. But (another word of advice): please sort out your attitude to foie gras before arriving. In the Dordogne, it crops up everywhere. The 60 best holidays for 2017 For our pick of the best trips, see our individual sections below: Top 10 beach holidays in France Top 10 activity and adventure holidays in France Top 10 art and culture holidays in France Top 10 villa holidays in France Top 10 food and wine holidays in France Top 10 cruises to France Tour operators For advice on tour operators, see our individual sections below: France summer holiday guide: beach breaks France summer holiday guide: villas and apartments France summer holiday guide: art and culture France summer holiday guide: activity and adventure France summer holiday guide: food and wine France summer holiday guide: cruises The first colour photographs of France Getting there Crossing the Channel For cheapest fares, research and book on operators' websites, and for peak season travel book ahead, especially on longer crossings. Read our full guide to cross-channel ferries to France Eurotunnel (0844 335 3535; eurotunnel.com) The Folkestone-Calais car shuttle train service is the fastest way to cross the Channel, and services are unaffected by the weather. However, fares are generally higher than those offered by the ferry operators on short crossings. P&O Ferries (0871 664 2121; poferries.com) Dover-Calais. DFDS Seaways (0871 574 7235 (for Dover-Calais enquiries); dfdsseaways.co.uk) Dover-Dunkirk, Dover-Calais, Newhaven-Dieppe. Brittany Ferries (0871 244 1400; brittany-ferries.co.uk) Portsmouth to Le Havre, Caen, Cherbourg, St Malo; Poole-Cherbourg; Plymouth to Roscoff and, winter only, to St Malo. Seasonal fastcraft services Portsmouth-Cherbourg; conventional ferries on other routes. Condor Ferries (0845 609 1024; condorferries.com) Fastcraft services from Poole to St Malo via the Channel Islands. Roscoff, Brittany Credit: Boris Stroujko - Fotolia By train Eurostar (eurostar.com) operates year-round services from London and Kent to Paris, Calais, Lille and Disneyland Paris. A new year-round service also operates to Lyon, Avignon and Marseille. Through fares are possible from regional UK stations, and to many other French cities. Voyages-sncf.com (0844 848 5848; voyages-sncf.com), formerly Rail Europe, can book trips combining Eurostar with TGV and local services, any rail journey within France, and French rail passes. For all train journeys, book well ahead for cheapest fares - Eurostar's booking horizon is up to six months on major services (up to nine months for Disneyland Paris). Before booking, refer to seat61.com for invaluable advice on French train travel. The best hotels in France By air Use skyscanner.net for who flies where and fare comparisons. Before booking, also calculate extra charges for checking in bags and so forth. By coach For often cheap fares to Paris, Lille and sometimes other French destinations, contact Eurolines (eurolines.co.uk), Megabus (uk.megabus.com) and OUIBUS (uk.ouibus.com). Getting there advice by Fred Mawer More Telegraph Travel expert guides Follow Telegraph Travel on Twitter France: summer holiday planner

The 60 best holidays in France for 2018

France summer booking guide Beach Villa Culture Food Activity Cruise Planning a holiday to France? Read our guide to the best regions, including expert advice on where to go on the Côte-d'Azur and Aquitaine Coast, in Provence, Languedoc-Roussillon, Brittany, Normandy, Burgundy and the Dordogne as well as the best operators and booking details. By Anthony Peregrine, Telegraph Travel France expert. Click on the tabs above for our expert's picks of the best beach, villa, culture, food and drink, activity and cruise holidays in France. We are reliably schizophrenic about the French. This is understandable. They are both our next-door neighbours, and hereditary foes. Because we live so close, their supposed foibles - arrogance, slipperiness, dubious morality - are amplified. And yet, and yet, we can't keep out of their country. Clearly, and like a classy courtesan, France is so damned seductive that she lures us away from fiercely-held principles. You can see how she might. The most diverse country in Europe runs from celebrated mountains to the continent's finest coast via everything else in-between. Great rivers run hither and yon, forest covers 28 per cent of the landscape and there's hardly anyone about. Amboise, in the Loire Credit: stevanzz - Fotolia More Telegraph Travel expert guides For roughly the same population, France covers more than twice the area of the UK. The few there are have filled the place with the first-class food and wine, châteaux (not all built to fight the English) and variegated culture. In few other countries can you go, as I did four summers ago, from a bull-running festival to major Signac exhibition in under 25 minutes. Villages remain complete unto themselves, rather than urban out-reach communities. They will have proper bakeries. The chain store might still be the ironmonger's. The mayor will take him(her)self very seriously. As importantly, and despite (or because of?) its Jacobin impulse to centralisation, France has retained marked regional identities. The country covers the West European spectrum, from Flemish and Germanic in the north to Latin in the south. You can holiday in a different France every time you go. But how do you choose where? Frances 20 most beautiful villages You might start on the Côte-d'Azur, if for no other reason than that well-bred Britons have been doing so for 200 years. We were the first to apply manners, fashion and decadence to the natural splendour (mountains dropping to the sea; unfiltered light; creeks; you've seen the photos). Glamour remains - the Negresco Hotel in Nice, the Caves-du-Roy night-club in St Tropez - even though, in places, the coast fills up pretty full these days. (What did you expect? You'd have it all to yourself?) The contemporary Azurean talent is, in fact, to project itself as an arty jet-set destination while actually catering for Everyman. Prices need be no more punishing than in Calais. (My favourite restaurant in Nice, the Voyageur Nissart, has full-meal menus from £14.) And out-running the crowds is a cinch. Head for the Corniches des Maures or de l'Esterel, or the hills behind Menton and Nice. The twist of a hairpin spins you from glitz to an older, rockier region where mojitos are things you spray against. How to avoid the crowds in Provence The same is true in Provence. It may be standing-room-only in the cultured A-team towns - Aix, Arles and Avignon - but you stand alone on the Lure mountain, or the Vaucluse Plateau. Naturally, the region slides easily into soft-focus - sensual markets, apéritifs by the pool, Sisteron lamb on a village terrace - but, at base, it's a hard-stone rugged world which has survived worse than tourism. It's tougher yet, and the coast very much flatter, across the Rhône in Languedoc-Roussillon. No-one came here until the 1960s, when France decided it needed its own Costa, to stop French people going to Spain. Fishing ports were adapted uncertainly. New-build holiday resorts went up - notably, La Grande Motte, whose ziggurats and pyramids describe exactly what 1960s planners thought the future would look like. Provence: no other region in Europe, not even Tuscany, has so nourished our dreams and sensual demands Credit: Newmarket Holidays Few would argue that all this is uniformly charming, but the sandy beaches are endless, the sea-food terrific, and few spots on earth have more happy families-per-square-metre than Le Grau-du-Roi or Argelès. The hinterland is quite different, vinelands ceding to sun-roasted hills overlain with garrigue and memories of religious massacre. Meanwhile, the Aquitaine Coast - Soulac down to Hendaye via Cap Ferret, Arcachon and Biarritz - is also flat with infinite beaches, but pounded by the Atlantic. The power renders the Med idle by comparison, tossing surfers about gratifyingly. In the deep south, the Basques may, on occasion, be uppity - but they're brilliant when singing, cooking axoa veal stew or sharing their red and white villages, and green Pyrenean hills. The north Brittany, too, can get out of hand. It did so in autumn 2013, when almost everyone took to the streets to protest about pretty much everything. The Bretons' is a strong identity, fashioned by rocks, onions , the sea and the swirl of Celtic culture - itself wonderful when playing the harp and dancing, but frankly bonkers at its mystical extremes. Both north and south, but especially north - from the Pays-des-Abers to the Pink Granite coast and on to St Malo - the Breton coast stirs like few others. A word of advice, though: Breton crêpes are overrated. Go for the Cancale oysters. It is a serious Breton regret that the Mont-Saint-Michel - the sublime rock-island abbey apparently landed from a more majestic dimension - should be just over the border in Normandy. But the Normans deserve some luck, after the clattering they took in summer 1944. Seventy years on, the D-Day beaches both retain an emotional impact and ring with the laughter of children, which is as it should be. Mont Saint-Michel, Normandy Credit: Getty Pre-war, the Normandy coast was best known for the cliffs at Etretat - sculpted by gods with time on their hands - the Parisian chic of Granville and Deauville, and the presence of almost every Impressionist you care to name. Le Havre and Honfleur overflowed with Monet and similar. But my very favourite Norman slice is the inland Pays-d'Auge, where half-timbered villages punctuate the rich green, double-cream countryside, where there are cows in bountiful pastures, and calvados in my glass. Deepest Burgundy I relax similarly into the greys, greens and gentle slopes of Burgundy - "a landscape of slow civilisation," as someone once said, correctly. The region long ago retired from medieval eminence, both religious and temporal, to play to its real strengths: making great wines, raising Charolais cattle and growing a little portly. Being plump became a duty imposed by history. Especially in the Côtes-de-Nuit and Côtes-de-Beaune, villages ripened by the wine trade seem in permanent readiness for a pageant. Some of the loveliest also line the Nivernais canal - as if painted into place - which makes Burgundy cruising an unexpected pleasure. Canal speeds are about right for the region, too. Life moves slowly in Beaune Credit: Getty And so, south-west to the Dordogne, which is not, as often supposed, a summer-house extension of the Home Counties. Granted, it gets many British visitors, re-taking, gîte by gîte, what we lost in the Hundred Years War. Try getting to Sarlat's Saturday market after 10am and, such is the pressure of visitor cars, you might as well park in Paris. Throngs of canoeists may also turn the Dordogne river into a watery M25. But, as in Provence, a turn of the wheel distances the throngs for a mainly mellow landscape of old-fashioned farming, meaty meals, woodland and arcaded village squares. The place was by-passed for centuries by mainstream France - which is why it now looks so untouched. That said, pre-historic men were jolly content here - notably along the Vézère valley, where they gathered in abundance, and not just to paint on cave walls. A few millennia on, so are we. But (another word of advice): please sort out your attitude to foie gras before arriving. In the Dordogne, it crops up everywhere. The 60 best holidays for 2017 For our pick of the best trips, see our individual sections below: Top 10 beach holidays in France Top 10 activity and adventure holidays in France Top 10 art and culture holidays in France Top 10 villa holidays in France Top 10 food and wine holidays in France Top 10 cruises to France Tour operators For advice on tour operators, see our individual sections below: France summer holiday guide: beach breaks France summer holiday guide: villas and apartments France summer holiday guide: art and culture France summer holiday guide: activity and adventure France summer holiday guide: food and wine France summer holiday guide: cruises The first colour photographs of France Getting there Crossing the Channel For cheapest fares, research and book on operators' websites, and for peak season travel book ahead, especially on longer crossings. Read our full guide to cross-channel ferries to France Eurotunnel (0844 335 3535; eurotunnel.com) The Folkestone-Calais car shuttle train service is the fastest way to cross the Channel, and services are unaffected by the weather. However, fares are generally higher than those offered by the ferry operators on short crossings. P&O Ferries (0871 664 2121; poferries.com) Dover-Calais. DFDS Seaways (0871 574 7235 (for Dover-Calais enquiries); dfdsseaways.co.uk) Dover-Dunkirk, Dover-Calais, Newhaven-Dieppe. Brittany Ferries (0871 244 1400; brittany-ferries.co.uk) Portsmouth to Le Havre, Caen, Cherbourg, St Malo; Poole-Cherbourg; Plymouth to Roscoff and, winter only, to St Malo. Seasonal fastcraft services Portsmouth-Cherbourg; conventional ferries on other routes. Condor Ferries (0845 609 1024; condorferries.com) Fastcraft services from Poole to St Malo via the Channel Islands. Roscoff, Brittany Credit: Boris Stroujko - Fotolia By train Eurostar (eurostar.com) operates year-round services from London and Kent to Paris, Calais, Lille and Disneyland Paris. A new year-round service also operates to Lyon, Avignon and Marseille. Through fares are possible from regional UK stations, and to many other French cities. Voyages-sncf.com (0844 848 5848; voyages-sncf.com), formerly Rail Europe, can book trips combining Eurostar with TGV and local services, any rail journey within France, and French rail passes. For all train journeys, book well ahead for cheapest fares - Eurostar's booking horizon is up to six months on major services (up to nine months for Disneyland Paris). Before booking, refer to seat61.com for invaluable advice on French train travel. The best hotels in France By air Use skyscanner.net for who flies where and fare comparisons. Before booking, also calculate extra charges for checking in bags and so forth. By coach For often cheap fares to Paris, Lille and sometimes other French destinations, contact Eurolines (eurolines.co.uk), Megabus (uk.megabus.com) and OUIBUS (uk.ouibus.com). Getting there advice by Fred Mawer More Telegraph Travel expert guides Follow Telegraph Travel on Twitter France: summer holiday planner

The 60 best holidays in France for 2018

France summer booking guide Beach Villa Culture Food Activity Cruise Planning a holiday to France? Read our guide to the best regions, including expert advice on where to go on the Côte-d'Azur and Aquitaine Coast, in Provence, Languedoc-Roussillon, Brittany, Normandy, Burgundy and the Dordogne as well as the best operators and booking details. By Anthony Peregrine, Telegraph Travel France expert. Click on the tabs above for our expert's picks of the best beach, villa, culture, food and drink, activity and cruise holidays in France. We are reliably schizophrenic about the French. This is understandable. They are both our next-door neighbours, and hereditary foes. Because we live so close, their supposed foibles - arrogance, slipperiness, dubious morality - are amplified. And yet, and yet, we can't keep out of their country. Clearly, and like a classy courtesan, France is so damned seductive that she lures us away from fiercely-held principles. You can see how she might. The most diverse country in Europe runs from celebrated mountains to the continent's finest coast via everything else in-between. Great rivers run hither and yon, forest covers 28 per cent of the landscape and there's hardly anyone about. Amboise, in the Loire Credit: stevanzz - Fotolia More Telegraph Travel expert guides For roughly the same population, France covers more than twice the area of the UK. The few there are have filled the place with the first-class food and wine, châteaux (not all built to fight the English) and variegated culture. In few other countries can you go, as I did four summers ago, from a bull-running festival to major Signac exhibition in under 25 minutes. Villages remain complete unto themselves, rather than urban out-reach communities. They will have proper bakeries. The chain store might still be the ironmonger's. The mayor will take him(her)self very seriously. As importantly, and despite (or because of?) its Jacobin impulse to centralisation, France has retained marked regional identities. The country covers the West European spectrum, from Flemish and Germanic in the north to Latin in the south. You can holiday in a different France every time you go. But how do you choose where? Frances 20 most beautiful villages You might start on the Côte-d'Azur, if for no other reason than that well-bred Britons have been doing so for 200 years. We were the first to apply manners, fashion and decadence to the natural splendour (mountains dropping to the sea; unfiltered light; creeks; you've seen the photos). Glamour remains - the Negresco Hotel in Nice, the Caves-du-Roy night-club in St Tropez - even though, in places, the coast fills up pretty full these days. (What did you expect? You'd have it all to yourself?) The contemporary Azurean talent is, in fact, to project itself as an arty jet-set destination while actually catering for Everyman. Prices need be no more punishing than in Calais. (My favourite restaurant in Nice, the Voyageur Nissart, has full-meal menus from £14.) And out-running the crowds is a cinch. Head for the Corniches des Maures or de l'Esterel, or the hills behind Menton and Nice. The twist of a hairpin spins you from glitz to an older, rockier region where mojitos are things you spray against. How to avoid the crowds in Provence The same is true in Provence. It may be standing-room-only in the cultured A-team towns - Aix, Arles and Avignon - but you stand alone on the Lure mountain, or the Vaucluse Plateau. Naturally, the region slides easily into soft-focus - sensual markets, apéritifs by the pool, Sisteron lamb on a village terrace - but, at base, it's a hard-stone rugged world which has survived worse than tourism. It's tougher yet, and the coast very much flatter, across the Rhône in Languedoc-Roussillon. No-one came here until the 1960s, when France decided it needed its own Costa, to stop French people going to Spain. Fishing ports were adapted uncertainly. New-build holiday resorts went up - notably, La Grande Motte, whose ziggurats and pyramids describe exactly what 1960s planners thought the future would look like. Provence: no other region in Europe, not even Tuscany, has so nourished our dreams and sensual demands Credit: Newmarket Holidays Few would argue that all this is uniformly charming, but the sandy beaches are endless, the sea-food terrific, and few spots on earth have more happy families-per-square-metre than Le Grau-du-Roi or Argelès. The hinterland is quite different, vinelands ceding to sun-roasted hills overlain with garrigue and memories of religious massacre. Meanwhile, the Aquitaine Coast - Soulac down to Hendaye via Cap Ferret, Arcachon and Biarritz - is also flat with infinite beaches, but pounded by the Atlantic. The power renders the Med idle by comparison, tossing surfers about gratifyingly. In the deep south, the Basques may, on occasion, be uppity - but they're brilliant when singing, cooking axoa veal stew or sharing their red and white villages, and green Pyrenean hills. The north Brittany, too, can get out of hand. It did so in autumn 2013, when almost everyone took to the streets to protest about pretty much everything. The Bretons' is a strong identity, fashioned by rocks, onions , the sea and the swirl of Celtic culture - itself wonderful when playing the harp and dancing, but frankly bonkers at its mystical extremes. Both north and south, but especially north - from the Pays-des-Abers to the Pink Granite coast and on to St Malo - the Breton coast stirs like few others. A word of advice, though: Breton crêpes are overrated. Go for the Cancale oysters. It is a serious Breton regret that the Mont-Saint-Michel - the sublime rock-island abbey apparently landed from a more majestic dimension - should be just over the border in Normandy. But the Normans deserve some luck, after the clattering they took in summer 1944. Seventy years on, the D-Day beaches both retain an emotional impact and ring with the laughter of children, which is as it should be. Mont Saint-Michel, Normandy Credit: Getty Pre-war, the Normandy coast was best known for the cliffs at Etretat - sculpted by gods with time on their hands - the Parisian chic of Granville and Deauville, and the presence of almost every Impressionist you care to name. Le Havre and Honfleur overflowed with Monet and similar. But my very favourite Norman slice is the inland Pays-d'Auge, where half-timbered villages punctuate the rich green, double-cream countryside, where there are cows in bountiful pastures, and calvados in my glass. Deepest Burgundy I relax similarly into the greys, greens and gentle slopes of Burgundy - "a landscape of slow civilisation," as someone once said, correctly. The region long ago retired from medieval eminence, both religious and temporal, to play to its real strengths: making great wines, raising Charolais cattle and growing a little portly. Being plump became a duty imposed by history. Especially in the Côtes-de-Nuit and Côtes-de-Beaune, villages ripened by the wine trade seem in permanent readiness for a pageant. Some of the loveliest also line the Nivernais canal - as if painted into place - which makes Burgundy cruising an unexpected pleasure. Canal speeds are about right for the region, too. Life moves slowly in Beaune Credit: Getty And so, south-west to the Dordogne, which is not, as often supposed, a summer-house extension of the Home Counties. Granted, it gets many British visitors, re-taking, gîte by gîte, what we lost in the Hundred Years War. Try getting to Sarlat's Saturday market after 10am and, such is the pressure of visitor cars, you might as well park in Paris. Throngs of canoeists may also turn the Dordogne river into a watery M25. But, as in Provence, a turn of the wheel distances the throngs for a mainly mellow landscape of old-fashioned farming, meaty meals, woodland and arcaded village squares. The place was by-passed for centuries by mainstream France - which is why it now looks so untouched. That said, pre-historic men were jolly content here - notably along the Vézère valley, where they gathered in abundance, and not just to paint on cave walls. A few millennia on, so are we. But (another word of advice): please sort out your attitude to foie gras before arriving. In the Dordogne, it crops up everywhere. The 60 best holidays for 2017 For our pick of the best trips, see our individual sections below: Top 10 beach holidays in France Top 10 activity and adventure holidays in France Top 10 art and culture holidays in France Top 10 villa holidays in France Top 10 food and wine holidays in France Top 10 cruises to France Tour operators For advice on tour operators, see our individual sections below: France summer holiday guide: beach breaks France summer holiday guide: villas and apartments France summer holiday guide: art and culture France summer holiday guide: activity and adventure France summer holiday guide: food and wine France summer holiday guide: cruises The first colour photographs of France Getting there Crossing the Channel For cheapest fares, research and book on operators' websites, and for peak season travel book ahead, especially on longer crossings. Read our full guide to cross-channel ferries to France Eurotunnel (0844 335 3535; eurotunnel.com) The Folkestone-Calais car shuttle train service is the fastest way to cross the Channel, and services are unaffected by the weather. However, fares are generally higher than those offered by the ferry operators on short crossings. P&O Ferries (0871 664 2121; poferries.com) Dover-Calais. DFDS Seaways (0871 574 7235 (for Dover-Calais enquiries); dfdsseaways.co.uk) Dover-Dunkirk, Dover-Calais, Newhaven-Dieppe. Brittany Ferries (0871 244 1400; brittany-ferries.co.uk) Portsmouth to Le Havre, Caen, Cherbourg, St Malo; Poole-Cherbourg; Plymouth to Roscoff and, winter only, to St Malo. Seasonal fastcraft services Portsmouth-Cherbourg; conventional ferries on other routes. Condor Ferries (0845 609 1024; condorferries.com) Fastcraft services from Poole to St Malo via the Channel Islands. Roscoff, Brittany Credit: Boris Stroujko - Fotolia By train Eurostar (eurostar.com) operates year-round services from London and Kent to Paris, Calais, Lille and Disneyland Paris. A new year-round service also operates to Lyon, Avignon and Marseille. Through fares are possible from regional UK stations, and to many other French cities. Voyages-sncf.com (0844 848 5848; voyages-sncf.com), formerly Rail Europe, can book trips combining Eurostar with TGV and local services, any rail journey within France, and French rail passes. For all train journeys, book well ahead for cheapest fares - Eurostar's booking horizon is up to six months on major services (up to nine months for Disneyland Paris). Before booking, refer to seat61.com for invaluable advice on French train travel. The best hotels in France By air Use skyscanner.net for who flies where and fare comparisons. Before booking, also calculate extra charges for checking in bags and so forth. By coach For often cheap fares to Paris, Lille and sometimes other French destinations, contact Eurolines (eurolines.co.uk), Megabus (uk.megabus.com) and OUIBUS (uk.ouibus.com). Getting there advice by Fred Mawer More Telegraph Travel expert guides Follow Telegraph Travel on Twitter France: summer holiday planner

The 60 best holidays in France for 2018

France summer booking guide Beach Villa Culture Food Activity Cruise Planning a holiday to France? Read our guide to the best regions, including expert advice on where to go on the Côte-d'Azur and Aquitaine Coast, in Provence, Languedoc-Roussillon, Brittany, Normandy, Burgundy and the Dordogne as well as the best operators and booking details. By Anthony Peregrine, Telegraph Travel France expert. Click on the tabs above for our expert's picks of the best beach, villa, culture, food and drink, activity and cruise holidays in France. We are reliably schizophrenic about the French. This is understandable. They are both our next-door neighbours, and hereditary foes. Because we live so close, their supposed foibles - arrogance, slipperiness, dubious morality - are amplified. And yet, and yet, we can't keep out of their country. Clearly, and like a classy courtesan, France is so damned seductive that she lures us away from fiercely-held principles. You can see how she might. The most diverse country in Europe runs from celebrated mountains to the continent's finest coast via everything else in-between. Great rivers run hither and yon, forest covers 28 per cent of the landscape and there's hardly anyone about. Amboise, in the Loire Credit: stevanzz - Fotolia More Telegraph Travel expert guides For roughly the same population, France covers more than twice the area of the UK. The few there are have filled the place with the first-class food and wine, châteaux (not all built to fight the English) and variegated culture. In few other countries can you go, as I did four summers ago, from a bull-running festival to major Signac exhibition in under 25 minutes. Villages remain complete unto themselves, rather than urban out-reach communities. They will have proper bakeries. The chain store might still be the ironmonger's. The mayor will take him(her)self very seriously. As importantly, and despite (or because of?) its Jacobin impulse to centralisation, France has retained marked regional identities. The country covers the West European spectrum, from Flemish and Germanic in the north to Latin in the south. You can holiday in a different France every time you go. But how do you choose where? Frances 20 most beautiful villages You might start on the Côte-d'Azur, if for no other reason than that well-bred Britons have been doing so for 200 years. We were the first to apply manners, fashion and decadence to the natural splendour (mountains dropping to the sea; unfiltered light; creeks; you've seen the photos). Glamour remains - the Negresco Hotel in Nice, the Caves-du-Roy night-club in St Tropez - even though, in places, the coast fills up pretty full these days. (What did you expect? You'd have it all to yourself?) The contemporary Azurean talent is, in fact, to project itself as an arty jet-set destination while actually catering for Everyman. Prices need be no more punishing than in Calais. (My favourite restaurant in Nice, the Voyageur Nissart, has full-meal menus from £14.) And out-running the crowds is a cinch. Head for the Corniches des Maures or de l'Esterel, or the hills behind Menton and Nice. The twist of a hairpin spins you from glitz to an older, rockier region where mojitos are things you spray against. How to avoid the crowds in Provence The same is true in Provence. It may be standing-room-only in the cultured A-team towns - Aix, Arles and Avignon - but you stand alone on the Lure mountain, or the Vaucluse Plateau. Naturally, the region slides easily into soft-focus - sensual markets, apéritifs by the pool, Sisteron lamb on a village terrace - but, at base, it's a hard-stone rugged world which has survived worse than tourism. It's tougher yet, and the coast very much flatter, across the Rhône in Languedoc-Roussillon. No-one came here until the 1960s, when France decided it needed its own Costa, to stop French people going to Spain. Fishing ports were adapted uncertainly. New-build holiday resorts went up - notably, La Grande Motte, whose ziggurats and pyramids describe exactly what 1960s planners thought the future would look like. Provence: no other region in Europe, not even Tuscany, has so nourished our dreams and sensual demands Credit: Newmarket Holidays Few would argue that all this is uniformly charming, but the sandy beaches are endless, the sea-food terrific, and few spots on earth have more happy families-per-square-metre than Le Grau-du-Roi or Argelès. The hinterland is quite different, vinelands ceding to sun-roasted hills overlain with garrigue and memories of religious massacre. Meanwhile, the Aquitaine Coast - Soulac down to Hendaye via Cap Ferret, Arcachon and Biarritz - is also flat with infinite beaches, but pounded by the Atlantic. The power renders the Med idle by comparison, tossing surfers about gratifyingly. In the deep south, the Basques may, on occasion, be uppity - but they're brilliant when singing, cooking axoa veal stew or sharing their red and white villages, and green Pyrenean hills. The north Brittany, too, can get out of hand. It did so in autumn 2013, when almost everyone took to the streets to protest about pretty much everything. The Bretons' is a strong identity, fashioned by rocks, onions , the sea and the swirl of Celtic culture - itself wonderful when playing the harp and dancing, but frankly bonkers at its mystical extremes. Both north and south, but especially north - from the Pays-des-Abers to the Pink Granite coast and on to St Malo - the Breton coast stirs like few others. A word of advice, though: Breton crêpes are overrated. Go for the Cancale oysters. It is a serious Breton regret that the Mont-Saint-Michel - the sublime rock-island abbey apparently landed from a more majestic dimension - should be just over the border in Normandy. But the Normans deserve some luck, after the clattering they took in summer 1944. Seventy years on, the D-Day beaches both retain an emotional impact and ring with the laughter of children, which is as it should be. Mont Saint-Michel, Normandy Credit: Getty Pre-war, the Normandy coast was best known for the cliffs at Etretat - sculpted by gods with time on their hands - the Parisian chic of Granville and Deauville, and the presence of almost every Impressionist you care to name. Le Havre and Honfleur overflowed with Monet and similar. But my very favourite Norman slice is the inland Pays-d'Auge, where half-timbered villages punctuate the rich green, double-cream countryside, where there are cows in bountiful pastures, and calvados in my glass. Deepest Burgundy I relax similarly into the greys, greens and gentle slopes of Burgundy - "a landscape of slow civilisation," as someone once said, correctly. The region long ago retired from medieval eminence, both religious and temporal, to play to its real strengths: making great wines, raising Charolais cattle and growing a little portly. Being plump became a duty imposed by history. Especially in the Côtes-de-Nuit and Côtes-de-Beaune, villages ripened by the wine trade seem in permanent readiness for a pageant. Some of the loveliest also line the Nivernais canal - as if painted into place - which makes Burgundy cruising an unexpected pleasure. Canal speeds are about right for the region, too. Life moves slowly in Beaune Credit: Getty And so, south-west to the Dordogne, which is not, as often supposed, a summer-house extension of the Home Counties. Granted, it gets many British visitors, re-taking, gîte by gîte, what we lost in the Hundred Years War. Try getting to Sarlat's Saturday market after 10am and, such is the pressure of visitor cars, you might as well park in Paris. Throngs of canoeists may also turn the Dordogne river into a watery M25. But, as in Provence, a turn of the wheel distances the throngs for a mainly mellow landscape of old-fashioned farming, meaty meals, woodland and arcaded village squares. The place was by-passed for centuries by mainstream France - which is why it now looks so untouched. That said, pre-historic men were jolly content here - notably along the Vézère valley, where they gathered in abundance, and not just to paint on cave walls. A few millennia on, so are we. But (another word of advice): please sort out your attitude to foie gras before arriving. In the Dordogne, it crops up everywhere. The 60 best holidays for 2017 For our pick of the best trips, see our individual sections below: Top 10 beach holidays in France Top 10 activity and adventure holidays in France Top 10 art and culture holidays in France Top 10 villa holidays in France Top 10 food and wine holidays in France Top 10 cruises to France Tour operators For advice on tour operators, see our individual sections below: France summer holiday guide: beach breaks France summer holiday guide: villas and apartments France summer holiday guide: art and culture France summer holiday guide: activity and adventure France summer holiday guide: food and wine France summer holiday guide: cruises The first colour photographs of France Getting there Crossing the Channel For cheapest fares, research and book on operators' websites, and for peak season travel book ahead, especially on longer crossings. Read our full guide to cross-channel ferries to France Eurotunnel (0844 335 3535; eurotunnel.com) The Folkestone-Calais car shuttle train service is the fastest way to cross the Channel, and services are unaffected by the weather. However, fares are generally higher than those offered by the ferry operators on short crossings. P&O Ferries (0871 664 2121; poferries.com) Dover-Calais. DFDS Seaways (0871 574 7235 (for Dover-Calais enquiries); dfdsseaways.co.uk) Dover-Dunkirk, Dover-Calais, Newhaven-Dieppe. Brittany Ferries (0871 244 1400; brittany-ferries.co.uk) Portsmouth to Le Havre, Caen, Cherbourg, St Malo; Poole-Cherbourg; Plymouth to Roscoff and, winter only, to St Malo. Seasonal fastcraft services Portsmouth-Cherbourg; conventional ferries on other routes. Condor Ferries (0845 609 1024; condorferries.com) Fastcraft services from Poole to St Malo via the Channel Islands. Roscoff, Brittany Credit: Boris Stroujko - Fotolia By train Eurostar (eurostar.com) operates year-round services from London and Kent to Paris, Calais, Lille and Disneyland Paris. A new year-round service also operates to Lyon, Avignon and Marseille. Through fares are possible from regional UK stations, and to many other French cities. Voyages-sncf.com (0844 848 5848; voyages-sncf.com), formerly Rail Europe, can book trips combining Eurostar with TGV and local services, any rail journey within France, and French rail passes. For all train journeys, book well ahead for cheapest fares - Eurostar's booking horizon is up to six months on major services (up to nine months for Disneyland Paris). Before booking, refer to seat61.com for invaluable advice on French train travel. The best hotels in France By air Use skyscanner.net for who flies where and fare comparisons. Before booking, also calculate extra charges for checking in bags and so forth. By coach For often cheap fares to Paris, Lille and sometimes other French destinations, contact Eurolines (eurolines.co.uk), Megabus (uk.megabus.com) and OUIBUS (uk.ouibus.com). Getting there advice by Fred Mawer More Telegraph Travel expert guides Follow Telegraph Travel on Twitter France: summer holiday planner

The 60 best holidays in France for 2018

France summer booking guide Beach Villa Culture Food Activity Cruise Planning a holiday to France? Read our guide to the best regions, including expert advice on where to go on the Côte-d'Azur and Aquitaine Coast, in Provence, Languedoc-Roussillon, Brittany, Normandy, Burgundy and the Dordogne as well as the best operators and booking details. By Anthony Peregrine, Telegraph Travel France expert. Click on the tabs above for our expert's picks of the best beach, villa, culture, food and drink, activity and cruise holidays in France. We are reliably schizophrenic about the French. This is understandable. They are both our next-door neighbours, and hereditary foes. Because we live so close, their supposed foibles - arrogance, slipperiness, dubious morality - are amplified. And yet, and yet, we can't keep out of their country. Clearly, and like a classy courtesan, France is so damned seductive that she lures us away from fiercely-held principles. You can see how she might. The most diverse country in Europe runs from celebrated mountains to the continent's finest coast via everything else in-between. Great rivers run hither and yon, forest covers 28 per cent of the landscape and there's hardly anyone about. Amboise, in the Loire Credit: stevanzz - Fotolia More Telegraph Travel expert guides For roughly the same population, France covers more than twice the area of the UK. The few there are have filled the place with the first-class food and wine, châteaux (not all built to fight the English) and variegated culture. In few other countries can you go, as I did four summers ago, from a bull-running festival to major Signac exhibition in under 25 minutes. Villages remain complete unto themselves, rather than urban out-reach communities. They will have proper bakeries. The chain store might still be the ironmonger's. The mayor will take him(her)self very seriously. As importantly, and despite (or because of?) its Jacobin impulse to centralisation, France has retained marked regional identities. The country covers the West European spectrum, from Flemish and Germanic in the north to Latin in the south. You can holiday in a different France every time you go. But how do you choose where? Frances 20 most beautiful villages You might start on the Côte-d'Azur, if for no other reason than that well-bred Britons have been doing so for 200 years. We were the first to apply manners, fashion and decadence to the natural splendour (mountains dropping to the sea; unfiltered light; creeks; you've seen the photos). Glamour remains - the Negresco Hotel in Nice, the Caves-du-Roy night-club in St Tropez - even though, in places, the coast fills up pretty full these days. (What did you expect? You'd have it all to yourself?) The contemporary Azurean talent is, in fact, to project itself as an arty jet-set destination while actually catering for Everyman. Prices need be no more punishing than in Calais. (My favourite restaurant in Nice, the Voyageur Nissart, has full-meal menus from £14.) And out-running the crowds is a cinch. Head for the Corniches des Maures or de l'Esterel, or the hills behind Menton and Nice. The twist of a hairpin spins you from glitz to an older, rockier region where mojitos are things you spray against. How to avoid the crowds in Provence The same is true in Provence. It may be standing-room-only in the cultured A-team towns - Aix, Arles and Avignon - but you stand alone on the Lure mountain, or the Vaucluse Plateau. Naturally, the region slides easily into soft-focus - sensual markets, apéritifs by the pool, Sisteron lamb on a village terrace - but, at base, it's a hard-stone rugged world which has survived worse than tourism. It's tougher yet, and the coast very much flatter, across the Rhône in Languedoc-Roussillon. No-one came here until the 1960s, when France decided it needed its own Costa, to stop French people going to Spain. Fishing ports were adapted uncertainly. New-build holiday resorts went up - notably, La Grande Motte, whose ziggurats and pyramids describe exactly what 1960s planners thought the future would look like. Provence: no other region in Europe, not even Tuscany, has so nourished our dreams and sensual demands Credit: Newmarket Holidays Few would argue that all this is uniformly charming, but the sandy beaches are endless, the sea-food terrific, and few spots on earth have more happy families-per-square-metre than Le Grau-du-Roi or Argelès. The hinterland is quite different, vinelands ceding to sun-roasted hills overlain with garrigue and memories of religious massacre. Meanwhile, the Aquitaine Coast - Soulac down to Hendaye via Cap Ferret, Arcachon and Biarritz - is also flat with infinite beaches, but pounded by the Atlantic. The power renders the Med idle by comparison, tossing surfers about gratifyingly. In the deep south, the Basques may, on occasion, be uppity - but they're brilliant when singing, cooking axoa veal stew or sharing their red and white villages, and green Pyrenean hills. The north Brittany, too, can get out of hand. It did so in autumn 2013, when almost everyone took to the streets to protest about pretty much everything. The Bretons' is a strong identity, fashioned by rocks, onions , the sea and the swirl of Celtic culture - itself wonderful when playing the harp and dancing, but frankly bonkers at its mystical extremes. Both north and south, but especially north - from the Pays-des-Abers to the Pink Granite coast and on to St Malo - the Breton coast stirs like few others. A word of advice, though: Breton crêpes are overrated. Go for the Cancale oysters. It is a serious Breton regret that the Mont-Saint-Michel - the sublime rock-island abbey apparently landed from a more majestic dimension - should be just over the border in Normandy. But the Normans deserve some luck, after the clattering they took in summer 1944. Seventy years on, the D-Day beaches both retain an emotional impact and ring with the laughter of children, which is as it should be. Mont Saint-Michel, Normandy Credit: Getty Pre-war, the Normandy coast was best known for the cliffs at Etretat - sculpted by gods with time on their hands - the Parisian chic of Granville and Deauville, and the presence of almost every Impressionist you care to name. Le Havre and Honfleur overflowed with Monet and similar. But my very favourite Norman slice is the inland Pays-d'Auge, where half-timbered villages punctuate the rich green, double-cream countryside, where there are cows in bountiful pastures, and calvados in my glass. Deepest Burgundy I relax similarly into the greys, greens and gentle slopes of Burgundy - "a landscape of slow civilisation," as someone once said, correctly. The region long ago retired from medieval eminence, both religious and temporal, to play to its real strengths: making great wines, raising Charolais cattle and growing a little portly. Being plump became a duty imposed by history. Especially in the Côtes-de-Nuit and Côtes-de-Beaune, villages ripened by the wine trade seem in permanent readiness for a pageant. Some of the loveliest also line the Nivernais canal - as if painted into place - which makes Burgundy cruising an unexpected pleasure. Canal speeds are about right for the region, too. Life moves slowly in Beaune Credit: Getty And so, south-west to the Dordogne, which is not, as often supposed, a summer-house extension of the Home Counties. Granted, it gets many British visitors, re-taking, gîte by gîte, what we lost in the Hundred Years War. Try getting to Sarlat's Saturday market after 10am and, such is the pressure of visitor cars, you might as well park in Paris. Throngs of canoeists may also turn the Dordogne river into a watery M25. But, as in Provence, a turn of the wheel distances the throngs for a mainly mellow landscape of old-fashioned farming, meaty meals, woodland and arcaded village squares. The place was by-passed for centuries by mainstream France - which is why it now looks so untouched. That said, pre-historic men were jolly content here - notably along the Vézère valley, where they gathered in abundance, and not just to paint on cave walls. A few millennia on, so are we. But (another word of advice): please sort out your attitude to foie gras before arriving. In the Dordogne, it crops up everywhere. The 60 best holidays for 2017 For our pick of the best trips, see our individual sections below: Top 10 beach holidays in France Top 10 activity and adventure holidays in France Top 10 art and culture holidays in France Top 10 villa holidays in France Top 10 food and wine holidays in France Top 10 cruises to France Tour operators For advice on tour operators, see our individual sections below: France summer holiday guide: beach breaks France summer holiday guide: villas and apartments France summer holiday guide: art and culture France summer holiday guide: activity and adventure France summer holiday guide: food and wine France summer holiday guide: cruises The first colour photographs of France Getting there Crossing the Channel For cheapest fares, research and book on operators' websites, and for peak season travel book ahead, especially on longer crossings. Read our full guide to cross-channel ferries to France Eurotunnel (0844 335 3535; eurotunnel.com) The Folkestone-Calais car shuttle train service is the fastest way to cross the Channel, and services are unaffected by the weather. However, fares are generally higher than those offered by the ferry operators on short crossings. P&O Ferries (0871 664 2121; poferries.com) Dover-Calais. DFDS Seaways (0871 574 7235 (for Dover-Calais enquiries); dfdsseaways.co.uk) Dover-Dunkirk, Dover-Calais, Newhaven-Dieppe. Brittany Ferries (0871 244 1400; brittany-ferries.co.uk) Portsmouth to Le Havre, Caen, Cherbourg, St Malo; Poole-Cherbourg; Plymouth to Roscoff and, winter only, to St Malo. Seasonal fastcraft services Portsmouth-Cherbourg; conventional ferries on other routes. Condor Ferries (0845 609 1024; condorferries.com) Fastcraft services from Poole to St Malo via the Channel Islands. Roscoff, Brittany Credit: Boris Stroujko - Fotolia By train Eurostar (eurostar.com) operates year-round services from London and Kent to Paris, Calais, Lille and Disneyland Paris. A new year-round service also operates to Lyon, Avignon and Marseille. Through fares are possible from regional UK stations, and to many other French cities. Voyages-sncf.com (0844 848 5848; voyages-sncf.com), formerly Rail Europe, can book trips combining Eurostar with TGV and local services, any rail journey within France, and French rail passes. For all train journeys, book well ahead for cheapest fares - Eurostar's booking horizon is up to six months on major services (up to nine months for Disneyland Paris). Before booking, refer to seat61.com for invaluable advice on French train travel. The best hotels in France By air Use skyscanner.net for who flies where and fare comparisons. Before booking, also calculate extra charges for checking in bags and so forth. By coach For often cheap fares to Paris, Lille and sometimes other French destinations, contact Eurolines (eurolines.co.uk), Megabus (uk.megabus.com) and OUIBUS (uk.ouibus.com). Getting there advice by Fred Mawer More Telegraph Travel expert guides Follow Telegraph Travel on Twitter France: summer holiday planner

The 60 best holidays in France for 2018

France summer booking guide Beach Villa Culture Food Activity Cruise Planning a holiday to France? Read our guide to the best regions, including expert advice on where to go on the Côte-d'Azur and Aquitaine Coast, in Provence, Languedoc-Roussillon, Brittany, Normandy, Burgundy and the Dordogne as well as the best operators and booking details. By Anthony Peregrine, Telegraph Travel France expert. Click on the tabs above for our expert's picks of the best beach, villa, culture, food and drink, activity and cruise holidays in France. We are reliably schizophrenic about the French. This is understandable. They are both our next-door neighbours, and hereditary foes. Because we live so close, their supposed foibles - arrogance, slipperiness, dubious morality - are amplified. And yet, and yet, we can't keep out of their country. Clearly, and like a classy courtesan, France is so damned seductive that she lures us away from fiercely-held principles. You can see how she might. The most diverse country in Europe runs from celebrated mountains to the continent's finest coast via everything else in-between. Great rivers run hither and yon, forest covers 28 per cent of the landscape and there's hardly anyone about. Amboise, in the Loire Credit: stevanzz - Fotolia More Telegraph Travel expert guides For roughly the same population, France covers more than twice the area of the UK. The few there are have filled the place with the first-class food and wine, châteaux (not all built to fight the English) and variegated culture. In few other countries can you go, as I did four summers ago, from a bull-running festival to major Signac exhibition in under 25 minutes. Villages remain complete unto themselves, rather than urban out-reach communities. They will have proper bakeries. The chain store might still be the ironmonger's. The mayor will take him(her)self very seriously. As importantly, and despite (or because of?) its Jacobin impulse to centralisation, France has retained marked regional identities. The country covers the West European spectrum, from Flemish and Germanic in the north to Latin in the south. You can holiday in a different France every time you go. But how do you choose where? Frances 20 most beautiful villages You might start on the Côte-d'Azur, if for no other reason than that well-bred Britons have been doing so for 200 years. We were the first to apply manners, fashion and decadence to the natural splendour (mountains dropping to the sea; unfiltered light; creeks; you've seen the photos). Glamour remains - the Negresco Hotel in Nice, the Caves-du-Roy night-club in St Tropez - even though, in places, the coast fills up pretty full these days. (What did you expect? You'd have it all to yourself?) The contemporary Azurean talent is, in fact, to project itself as an arty jet-set destination while actually catering for Everyman. Prices need be no more punishing than in Calais. (My favourite restaurant in Nice, the Voyageur Nissart, has full-meal menus from £14.) And out-running the crowds is a cinch. Head for the Corniches des Maures or de l'Esterel, or the hills behind Menton and Nice. The twist of a hairpin spins you from glitz to an older, rockier region where mojitos are things you spray against. How to avoid the crowds in Provence The same is true in Provence. It may be standing-room-only in the cultured A-team towns - Aix, Arles and Avignon - but you stand alone on the Lure mountain, or the Vaucluse Plateau. Naturally, the region slides easily into soft-focus - sensual markets, apéritifs by the pool, Sisteron lamb on a village terrace - but, at base, it's a hard-stone rugged world which has survived worse than tourism. It's tougher yet, and the coast very much flatter, across the Rhône in Languedoc-Roussillon. No-one came here until the 1960s, when France decided it needed its own Costa, to stop French people going to Spain. Fishing ports were adapted uncertainly. New-build holiday resorts went up - notably, La Grande Motte, whose ziggurats and pyramids describe exactly what 1960s planners thought the future would look like. Provence: no other region in Europe, not even Tuscany, has so nourished our dreams and sensual demands Credit: Newmarket Holidays Few would argue that all this is uniformly charming, but the sandy beaches are endless, the sea-food terrific, and few spots on earth have more happy families-per-square-metre than Le Grau-du-Roi or Argelès. The hinterland is quite different, vinelands ceding to sun-roasted hills overlain with garrigue and memories of religious massacre. Meanwhile, the Aquitaine Coast - Soulac down to Hendaye via Cap Ferret, Arcachon and Biarritz - is also flat with infinite beaches, but pounded by the Atlantic. The power renders the Med idle by comparison, tossing surfers about gratifyingly. In the deep south, the Basques may, on occasion, be uppity - but they're brilliant when singing, cooking axoa veal stew or sharing their red and white villages, and green Pyrenean hills. The north Brittany, too, can get out of hand. It did so in autumn 2013, when almost everyone took to the streets to protest about pretty much everything. The Bretons' is a strong identity, fashioned by rocks, onions , the sea and the swirl of Celtic culture - itself wonderful when playing the harp and dancing, but frankly bonkers at its mystical extremes. Both north and south, but especially north - from the Pays-des-Abers to the Pink Granite coast and on to St Malo - the Breton coast stirs like few others. A word of advice, though: Breton crêpes are overrated. Go for the Cancale oysters. It is a serious Breton regret that the Mont-Saint-Michel - the sublime rock-island abbey apparently landed from a more majestic dimension - should be just over the border in Normandy. But the Normans deserve some luck, after the clattering they took in summer 1944. Seventy years on, the D-Day beaches both retain an emotional impact and ring with the laughter of children, which is as it should be. Mont Saint-Michel, Normandy Credit: Getty Pre-war, the Normandy coast was best known for the cliffs at Etretat - sculpted by gods with time on their hands - the Parisian chic of Granville and Deauville, and the presence of almost every Impressionist you care to name. Le Havre and Honfleur overflowed with Monet and similar. But my very favourite Norman slice is the inland Pays-d'Auge, where half-timbered villages punctuate the rich green, double-cream countryside, where there are cows in bountiful pastures, and calvados in my glass. Deepest Burgundy I relax similarly into the greys, greens and gentle slopes of Burgundy - "a landscape of slow civilisation," as someone once said, correctly. The region long ago retired from medieval eminence, both religious and temporal, to play to its real strengths: making great wines, raising Charolais cattle and growing a little portly. Being plump became a duty imposed by history. Especially in the Côtes-de-Nuit and Côtes-de-Beaune, villages ripened by the wine trade seem in permanent readiness for a pageant. Some of the loveliest also line the Nivernais canal - as if painted into place - which makes Burgundy cruising an unexpected pleasure. Canal speeds are about right for the region, too. Life moves slowly in Beaune Credit: Getty And so, south-west to the Dordogne, which is not, as often supposed, a summer-house extension of the Home Counties. Granted, it gets many British visitors, re-taking, gîte by gîte, what we lost in the Hundred Years War. Try getting to Sarlat's Saturday market after 10am and, such is the pressure of visitor cars, you might as well park in Paris. Throngs of canoeists may also turn the Dordogne river into a watery M25. But, as in Provence, a turn of the wheel distances the throngs for a mainly mellow landscape of old-fashioned farming, meaty meals, woodland and arcaded village squares. The place was by-passed for centuries by mainstream France - which is why it now looks so untouched. That said, pre-historic men were jolly content here - notably along the Vézère valley, where they gathered in abundance, and not just to paint on cave walls. A few millennia on, so are we. But (another word of advice): please sort out your attitude to foie gras before arriving. In the Dordogne, it crops up everywhere. The 60 best holidays for 2017 For our pick of the best trips, see our individual sections below: Top 10 beach holidays in France Top 10 activity and adventure holidays in France Top 10 art and culture holidays in France Top 10 villa holidays in France Top 10 food and wine holidays in France Top 10 cruises to France Tour operators For advice on tour operators, see our individual sections below: France summer holiday guide: beach breaks France summer holiday guide: villas and apartments France summer holiday guide: art and culture France summer holiday guide: activity and adventure France summer holiday guide: food and wine France summer holiday guide: cruises The first colour photographs of France Getting there Crossing the Channel For cheapest fares, research and book on operators' websites, and for peak season travel book ahead, especially on longer crossings. Read our full guide to cross-channel ferries to France Eurotunnel (0844 335 3535; eurotunnel.com) The Folkestone-Calais car shuttle train service is the fastest way to cross the Channel, and services are unaffected by the weather. However, fares are generally higher than those offered by the ferry operators on short crossings. P&O Ferries (0871 664 2121; poferries.com) Dover-Calais. DFDS Seaways (0871 574 7235 (for Dover-Calais enquiries); dfdsseaways.co.uk) Dover-Dunkirk, Dover-Calais, Newhaven-Dieppe. Brittany Ferries (0871 244 1400; brittany-ferries.co.uk) Portsmouth to Le Havre, Caen, Cherbourg, St Malo; Poole-Cherbourg; Plymouth to Roscoff and, winter only, to St Malo. Seasonal fastcraft services Portsmouth-Cherbourg; conventional ferries on other routes. Condor Ferries (0845 609 1024; condorferries.com) Fastcraft services from Poole to St Malo via the Channel Islands. Roscoff, Brittany Credit: Boris Stroujko - Fotolia By train Eurostar (eurostar.com) operates year-round services from London and Kent to Paris, Calais, Lille and Disneyland Paris. A new year-round service also operates to Lyon, Avignon and Marseille. Through fares are possible from regional UK stations, and to many other French cities. Voyages-sncf.com (0844 848 5848; voyages-sncf.com), formerly Rail Europe, can book trips combining Eurostar with TGV and local services, any rail journey within France, and French rail passes. For all train journeys, book well ahead for cheapest fares - Eurostar's booking horizon is up to six months on major services (up to nine months for Disneyland Paris). Before booking, refer to seat61.com for invaluable advice on French train travel. The best hotels in France By air Use skyscanner.net for who flies where and fare comparisons. Before booking, also calculate extra charges for checking in bags and so forth. By coach For often cheap fares to Paris, Lille and sometimes other French destinations, contact Eurolines (eurolines.co.uk), Megabus (uk.megabus.com) and OUIBUS (uk.ouibus.com). Getting there advice by Fred Mawer More Telegraph Travel expert guides Follow Telegraph Travel on Twitter France: summer holiday planner

The 60 best holidays in France for 2018

France summer booking guide Beach Villa Culture Food Activity Cruise Planning a holiday to France? Read our guide to the best regions, including expert advice on where to go on the Côte-d'Azur and Aquitaine Coast, in Provence, Languedoc-Roussillon, Brittany, Normandy, Burgundy and the Dordogne as well as the best operators and booking details. By Anthony Peregrine, Telegraph Travel France expert. Click on the tabs above for our expert's picks of the best beach, villa, culture, food and drink, activity and cruise holidays in France. We are reliably schizophrenic about the French. This is understandable. They are both our next-door neighbours, and hereditary foes. Because we live so close, their supposed foibles - arrogance, slipperiness, dubious morality - are amplified. And yet, and yet, we can't keep out of their country. Clearly, and like a classy courtesan, France is so damned seductive that she lures us away from fiercely-held principles. You can see how she might. The most diverse country in Europe runs from celebrated mountains to the continent's finest coast via everything else in-between. Great rivers run hither and yon, forest covers 28 per cent of the landscape and there's hardly anyone about. Amboise, in the Loire Credit: stevanzz - Fotolia More Telegraph Travel expert guides For roughly the same population, France covers more than twice the area of the UK. The few there are have filled the place with the first-class food and wine, châteaux (not all built to fight the English) and variegated culture. In few other countries can you go, as I did four summers ago, from a bull-running festival to major Signac exhibition in under 25 minutes. Villages remain complete unto themselves, rather than urban out-reach communities. They will have proper bakeries. The chain store might still be the ironmonger's. The mayor will take him(her)self very seriously. As importantly, and despite (or because of?) its Jacobin impulse to centralisation, France has retained marked regional identities. The country covers the West European spectrum, from Flemish and Germanic in the north to Latin in the south. You can holiday in a different France every time you go. But how do you choose where? Frances 20 most beautiful villages You might start on the Côte-d'Azur, if for no other reason than that well-bred Britons have been doing so for 200 years. We were the first to apply manners, fashion and decadence to the natural splendour (mountains dropping to the sea; unfiltered light; creeks; you've seen the photos). Glamour remains - the Negresco Hotel in Nice, the Caves-du-Roy night-club in St Tropez - even though, in places, the coast fills up pretty full these days. (What did you expect? You'd have it all to yourself?) The contemporary Azurean talent is, in fact, to project itself as an arty jet-set destination while actually catering for Everyman. Prices need be no more punishing than in Calais. (My favourite restaurant in Nice, the Voyageur Nissart, has full-meal menus from £14.) And out-running the crowds is a cinch. Head for the Corniches des Maures or de l'Esterel, or the hills behind Menton and Nice. The twist of a hairpin spins you from glitz to an older, rockier region where mojitos are things you spray against. How to avoid the crowds in Provence The same is true in Provence. It may be standing-room-only in the cultured A-team towns - Aix, Arles and Avignon - but you stand alone on the Lure mountain, or the Vaucluse Plateau. Naturally, the region slides easily into soft-focus - sensual markets, apéritifs by the pool, Sisteron lamb on a village terrace - but, at base, it's a hard-stone rugged world which has survived worse than tourism. It's tougher yet, and the coast very much flatter, across the Rhône in Languedoc-Roussillon. No-one came here until the 1960s, when France decided it needed its own Costa, to stop French people going to Spain. Fishing ports were adapted uncertainly. New-build holiday resorts went up - notably, La Grande Motte, whose ziggurats and pyramids describe exactly what 1960s planners thought the future would look like. Provence: no other region in Europe, not even Tuscany, has so nourished our dreams and sensual demands Credit: Newmarket Holidays Few would argue that all this is uniformly charming, but the sandy beaches are endless, the sea-food terrific, and few spots on earth have more happy families-per-square-metre than Le Grau-du-Roi or Argelès. The hinterland is quite different, vinelands ceding to sun-roasted hills overlain with garrigue and memories of religious massacre. Meanwhile, the Aquitaine Coast - Soulac down to Hendaye via Cap Ferret, Arcachon and Biarritz - is also flat with infinite beaches, but pounded by the Atlantic. The power renders the Med idle by comparison, tossing surfers about gratifyingly. In the deep south, the Basques may, on occasion, be uppity - but they're brilliant when singing, cooking axoa veal stew or sharing their red and white villages, and green Pyrenean hills. The north Brittany, too, can get out of hand. It did so in autumn 2013, when almost everyone took to the streets to protest about pretty much everything. The Bretons' is a strong identity, fashioned by rocks, onions , the sea and the swirl of Celtic culture - itself wonderful when playing the harp and dancing, but frankly bonkers at its mystical extremes. Both north and south, but especially north - from the Pays-des-Abers to the Pink Granite coast and on to St Malo - the Breton coast stirs like few others. A word of advice, though: Breton crêpes are overrated. Go for the Cancale oysters. It is a serious Breton regret that the Mont-Saint-Michel - the sublime rock-island abbey apparently landed from a more majestic dimension - should be just over the border in Normandy. But the Normans deserve some luck, after the clattering they took in summer 1944. Seventy years on, the D-Day beaches both retain an emotional impact and ring with the laughter of children, which is as it should be. Mont Saint-Michel, Normandy Credit: Getty Pre-war, the Normandy coast was best known for the cliffs at Etretat - sculpted by gods with time on their hands - the Parisian chic of Granville and Deauville, and the presence of almost every Impressionist you care to name. Le Havre and Honfleur overflowed with Monet and similar. But my very favourite Norman slice is the inland Pays-d'Auge, where half-timbered villages punctuate the rich green, double-cream countryside, where there are cows in bountiful pastures, and calvados in my glass. Deepest Burgundy I relax similarly into the greys, greens and gentle slopes of Burgundy - "a landscape of slow civilisation," as someone once said, correctly. The region long ago retired from medieval eminence, both religious and temporal, to play to its real strengths: making great wines, raising Charolais cattle and growing a little portly. Being plump became a duty imposed by history. Especially in the Côtes-de-Nuit and Côtes-de-Beaune, villages ripened by the wine trade seem in permanent readiness for a pageant. Some of the loveliest also line the Nivernais canal - as if painted into place - which makes Burgundy cruising an unexpected pleasure. Canal speeds are about right for the region, too. Life moves slowly in Beaune Credit: Getty And so, south-west to the Dordogne, which is not, as often supposed, a summer-house extension of the Home Counties. Granted, it gets many British visitors, re-taking, gîte by gîte, what we lost in the Hundred Years War. Try getting to Sarlat's Saturday market after 10am and, such is the pressure of visitor cars, you might as well park in Paris. Throngs of canoeists may also turn the Dordogne river into a watery M25. But, as in Provence, a turn of the wheel distances the throngs for a mainly mellow landscape of old-fashioned farming, meaty meals, woodland and arcaded village squares. The place was by-passed for centuries by mainstream France - which is why it now looks so untouched. That said, pre-historic men were jolly content here - notably along the Vézère valley, where they gathered in abundance, and not just to paint on cave walls. A few millennia on, so are we. But (another word of advice): please sort out your attitude to foie gras before arriving. In the Dordogne, it crops up everywhere. The 60 best holidays for 2017 For our pick of the best trips, see our individual sections below: Top 10 beach holidays in France Top 10 activity and adventure holidays in France Top 10 art and culture holidays in France Top 10 villa holidays in France Top 10 food and wine holidays in France Top 10 cruises to France Tour operators For advice on tour operators, see our individual sections below: France summer holiday guide: beach breaks France summer holiday guide: villas and apartments France summer holiday guide: art and culture France summer holiday guide: activity and adventure France summer holiday guide: food and wine France summer holiday guide: cruises The first colour photographs of France Getting there Crossing the Channel For cheapest fares, research and book on operators' websites, and for peak season travel book ahead, especially on longer crossings. Read our full guide to cross-channel ferries to France Eurotunnel (0844 335 3535; eurotunnel.com) The Folkestone-Calais car shuttle train service is the fastest way to cross the Channel, and services are unaffected by the weather. However, fares are generally higher than those offered by the ferry operators on short crossings. P&O Ferries (0871 664 2121; poferries.com) Dover-Calais. DFDS Seaways (0871 574 7235 (for Dover-Calais enquiries); dfdsseaways.co.uk) Dover-Dunkirk, Dover-Calais, Newhaven-Dieppe. Brittany Ferries (0871 244 1400; brittany-ferries.co.uk) Portsmouth to Le Havre, Caen, Cherbourg, St Malo; Poole-Cherbourg; Plymouth to Roscoff and, winter only, to St Malo. Seasonal fastcraft services Portsmouth-Cherbourg; conventional ferries on other routes. Condor Ferries (0845 609 1024; condorferries.com) Fastcraft services from Poole to St Malo via the Channel Islands. Roscoff, Brittany Credit: Boris Stroujko - Fotolia By train Eurostar (eurostar.com) operates year-round services from London and Kent to Paris, Calais, Lille and Disneyland Paris. A new year-round service also operates to Lyon, Avignon and Marseille. Through fares are possible from regional UK stations, and to many other French cities. Voyages-sncf.com (0844 848 5848; voyages-sncf.com), formerly Rail Europe, can book trips combining Eurostar with TGV and local services, any rail journey within France, and French rail passes. For all train journeys, book well ahead for cheapest fares - Eurostar's booking horizon is up to six months on major services (up to nine months for Disneyland Paris). Before booking, refer to seat61.com for invaluable advice on French train travel. The best hotels in France By air Use skyscanner.net for who flies where and fare comparisons. Before booking, also calculate extra charges for checking in bags and so forth. By coach For often cheap fares to Paris, Lille and sometimes other French destinations, contact Eurolines (eurolines.co.uk), Megabus (uk.megabus.com) and OUIBUS (uk.ouibus.com). Getting there advice by Fred Mawer More Telegraph Travel expert guides Follow Telegraph Travel on Twitter France: summer holiday planner

The 60 best holidays in France for 2018

France summer booking guide Beach Villa Culture Food Activity Cruise Planning a holiday to France? Read our guide to the best regions, including expert advice on where to go on the Côte-d'Azur and Aquitaine Coast, in Provence, Languedoc-Roussillon, Brittany, Normandy, Burgundy and the Dordogne as well as the best operators and booking details. By Anthony Peregrine, Telegraph Travel France expert. Click on the tabs above for our expert's picks of the best beach, villa, culture, food and drink, activity and cruise holidays in France. We are reliably schizophrenic about the French. This is understandable. They are both our next-door neighbours, and hereditary foes. Because we live so close, their supposed foibles - arrogance, slipperiness, dubious morality - are amplified. And yet, and yet, we can't keep out of their country. Clearly, and like a classy courtesan, France is so damned seductive that she lures us away from fiercely-held principles. You can see how she might. The most diverse country in Europe runs from celebrated mountains to the continent's finest coast via everything else in-between. Great rivers run hither and yon, forest covers 28 per cent of the landscape and there's hardly anyone about. Amboise, in the Loire Credit: stevanzz - Fotolia More Telegraph Travel expert guides For roughly the same population, France covers more than twice the area of the UK. The few there are have filled the place with the first-class food and wine, châteaux (not all built to fight the English) and variegated culture. In few other countries can you go, as I did four summers ago, from a bull-running festival to major Signac exhibition in under 25 minutes. Villages remain complete unto themselves, rather than urban out-reach communities. They will have proper bakeries. The chain store might still be the ironmonger's. The mayor will take him(her)self very seriously. As importantly, and despite (or because of?) its Jacobin impulse to centralisation, France has retained marked regional identities. The country covers the West European spectrum, from Flemish and Germanic in the north to Latin in the south. You can holiday in a different France every time you go. But how do you choose where? Frances 20 most beautiful villages You might start on the Côte-d'Azur, if for no other reason than that well-bred Britons have been doing so for 200 years. We were the first to apply manners, fashion and decadence to the natural splendour (mountains dropping to the sea; unfiltered light; creeks; you've seen the photos). Glamour remains - the Negresco Hotel in Nice, the Caves-du-Roy night-club in St Tropez - even though, in places, the coast fills up pretty full these days. (What did you expect? You'd have it all to yourself?) The contemporary Azurean talent is, in fact, to project itself as an arty jet-set destination while actually catering for Everyman. Prices need be no more punishing than in Calais. (My favourite restaurant in Nice, the Voyageur Nissart, has full-meal menus from £14.) And out-running the crowds is a cinch. Head for the Corniches des Maures or de l'Esterel, or the hills behind Menton and Nice. The twist of a hairpin spins you from glitz to an older, rockier region where mojitos are things you spray against. How to avoid the crowds in Provence The same is true in Provence. It may be standing-room-only in the cultured A-team towns - Aix, Arles and Avignon - but you stand alone on the Lure mountain, or the Vaucluse Plateau. Naturally, the region slides easily into soft-focus - sensual markets, apéritifs by the pool, Sisteron lamb on a village terrace - but, at base, it's a hard-stone rugged world which has survived worse than tourism. It's tougher yet, and the coast very much flatter, across the Rhône in Languedoc-Roussillon. No-one came here until the 1960s, when France decided it needed its own Costa, to stop French people going to Spain. Fishing ports were adapted uncertainly. New-build holiday resorts went up - notably, La Grande Motte, whose ziggurats and pyramids describe exactly what 1960s planners thought the future would look like. Provence: no other region in Europe, not even Tuscany, has so nourished our dreams and sensual demands Credit: Newmarket Holidays Few would argue that all this is uniformly charming, but the sandy beaches are endless, the sea-food terrific, and few spots on earth have more happy families-per-square-metre than Le Grau-du-Roi or Argelès. The hinterland is quite different, vinelands ceding to sun-roasted hills overlain with garrigue and memories of religious massacre. Meanwhile, the Aquitaine Coast - Soulac down to Hendaye via Cap Ferret, Arcachon and Biarritz - is also flat with infinite beaches, but pounded by the Atlantic. The power renders the Med idle by comparison, tossing surfers about gratifyingly. In the deep south, the Basques may, on occasion, be uppity - but they're brilliant when singing, cooking axoa veal stew or sharing their red and white villages, and green Pyrenean hills. The north Brittany, too, can get out of hand. It did so in autumn 2013, when almost everyone took to the streets to protest about pretty much everything. The Bretons' is a strong identity, fashioned by rocks, onions , the sea and the swirl of Celtic culture - itself wonderful when playing the harp and dancing, but frankly bonkers at its mystical extremes. Both north and south, but especially north - from the Pays-des-Abers to the Pink Granite coast and on to St Malo - the Breton coast stirs like few others. A word of advice, though: Breton crêpes are overrated. Go for the Cancale oysters. It is a serious Breton regret that the Mont-Saint-Michel - the sublime rock-island abbey apparently landed from a more majestic dimension - should be just over the border in Normandy. But the Normans deserve some luck, after the clattering they took in summer 1944. Seventy years on, the D-Day beaches both retain an emotional impact and ring with the laughter of children, which is as it should be. Mont Saint-Michel, Normandy Credit: Getty Pre-war, the Normandy coast was best known for the cliffs at Etretat - sculpted by gods with time on their hands - the Parisian chic of Granville and Deauville, and the presence of almost every Impressionist you care to name. Le Havre and Honfleur overflowed with Monet and similar. But my very favourite Norman slice is the inland Pays-d'Auge, where half-timbered villages punctuate the rich green, double-cream countryside, where there are cows in bountiful pastures, and calvados in my glass. Deepest Burgundy I relax similarly into the greys, greens and gentle slopes of Burgundy - "a landscape of slow civilisation," as someone once said, correctly. The region long ago retired from medieval eminence, both religious and temporal, to play to its real strengths: making great wines, raising Charolais cattle and growing a little portly. Being plump became a duty imposed by history. Especially in the Côtes-de-Nuit and Côtes-de-Beaune, villages ripened by the wine trade seem in permanent readiness for a pageant. Some of the loveliest also line the Nivernais canal - as if painted into place - which makes Burgundy cruising an unexpected pleasure. Canal speeds are about right for the region, too. Life moves slowly in Beaune Credit: Getty And so, south-west to the Dordogne, which is not, as often supposed, a summer-house extension of the Home Counties. Granted, it gets many British visitors, re-taking, gîte by gîte, what we lost in the Hundred Years War. Try getting to Sarlat's Saturday market after 10am and, such is the pressure of visitor cars, you might as well park in Paris. Throngs of canoeists may also turn the Dordogne river into a watery M25. But, as in Provence, a turn of the wheel distances the throngs for a mainly mellow landscape of old-fashioned farming, meaty meals, woodland and arcaded village squares. The place was by-passed for centuries by mainstream France - which is why it now looks so untouched. That said, pre-historic men were jolly content here - notably along the Vézère valley, where they gathered in abundance, and not just to paint on cave walls. A few millennia on, so are we. But (another word of advice): please sort out your attitude to foie gras before arriving. In the Dordogne, it crops up everywhere. The 60 best holidays for 2017 For our pick of the best trips, see our individual sections below: Top 10 beach holidays in France Top 10 activity and adventure holidays in France Top 10 art and culture holidays in France Top 10 villa holidays in France Top 10 food and wine holidays in France Top 10 cruises to France Tour operators For advice on tour operators, see our individual sections below: France summer holiday guide: beach breaks France summer holiday guide: villas and apartments France summer holiday guide: art and culture France summer holiday guide: activity and adventure France summer holiday guide: food and wine France summer holiday guide: cruises The first colour photographs of France Getting there Crossing the Channel For cheapest fares, research and book on operators' websites, and for peak season travel book ahead, especially on longer crossings. Read our full guide to cross-channel ferries to France Eurotunnel (0844 335 3535; eurotunnel.com) The Folkestone-Calais car shuttle train service is the fastest way to cross the Channel, and services are unaffected by the weather. However, fares are generally higher than those offered by the ferry operators on short crossings. P&O Ferries (0871 664 2121; poferries.com) Dover-Calais. DFDS Seaways (0871 574 7235 (for Dover-Calais enquiries); dfdsseaways.co.uk) Dover-Dunkirk, Dover-Calais, Newhaven-Dieppe. Brittany Ferries (0871 244 1400; brittany-ferries.co.uk) Portsmouth to Le Havre, Caen, Cherbourg, St Malo; Poole-Cherbourg; Plymouth to Roscoff and, winter only, to St Malo. Seasonal fastcraft services Portsmouth-Cherbourg; conventional ferries on other routes. Condor Ferries (0845 609 1024; condorferries.com) Fastcraft services from Poole to St Malo via the Channel Islands. Roscoff, Brittany Credit: Boris Stroujko - Fotolia By train Eurostar (eurostar.com) operates year-round services from London and Kent to Paris, Calais, Lille and Disneyland Paris. A new year-round service also operates to Lyon, Avignon and Marseille. Through fares are possible from regional UK stations, and to many other French cities. Voyages-sncf.com (0844 848 5848; voyages-sncf.com), formerly Rail Europe, can book trips combining Eurostar with TGV and local services, any rail journey within France, and French rail passes. For all train journeys, book well ahead for cheapest fares - Eurostar's booking horizon is up to six months on major services (up to nine months for Disneyland Paris). Before booking, refer to seat61.com for invaluable advice on French train travel. The best hotels in France By air Use skyscanner.net for who flies where and fare comparisons. Before booking, also calculate extra charges for checking in bags and so forth. By coach For often cheap fares to Paris, Lille and sometimes other French destinations, contact Eurolines (eurolines.co.uk), Megabus (uk.megabus.com) and OUIBUS (uk.ouibus.com). Getting there advice by Fred Mawer More Telegraph Travel expert guides Follow Telegraph Travel on Twitter France: summer holiday planner

The 60 best holidays in France for 2018

France summer booking guide Beach Villa Culture Food Activity Cruise Planning a holiday to France? Read our guide to the best regions, including expert advice on where to go on the Côte-d'Azur and Aquitaine Coast, in Provence, Languedoc-Roussillon, Brittany, Normandy, Burgundy and the Dordogne as well as the best operators and booking details. By Anthony Peregrine, Telegraph Travel France expert. Click on the tabs above for our expert's picks of the best beach, villa, culture, food and drink, activity and cruise holidays in France. We are reliably schizophrenic about the French. This is understandable. They are both our next-door neighbours, and hereditary foes. Because we live so close, their supposed foibles - arrogance, slipperiness, dubious morality - are amplified. And yet, and yet, we can't keep out of their country. Clearly, and like a classy courtesan, France is so damned seductive that she lures us away from fiercely-held principles. You can see how she might. The most diverse country in Europe runs from celebrated mountains to the continent's finest coast via everything else in-between. Great rivers run hither and yon, forest covers 28 per cent of the landscape and there's hardly anyone about. Amboise, in the Loire Credit: stevanzz - Fotolia More Telegraph Travel expert guides For roughly the same population, France covers more than twice the area of the UK. The few there are have filled the place with the first-class food and wine, châteaux (not all built to fight the English) and variegated culture. In few other countries can you go, as I did four summers ago, from a bull-running festival to major Signac exhibition in under 25 minutes. Villages remain complete unto themselves, rather than urban out-reach communities. They will have proper bakeries. The chain store might still be the ironmonger's. The mayor will take him(her)self very seriously. As importantly, and despite (or because of?) its Jacobin impulse to centralisation, France has retained marked regional identities. The country covers the West European spectrum, from Flemish and Germanic in the north to Latin in the south. You can holiday in a different France every time you go. But how do you choose where? Frances 20 most beautiful villages You might start on the Côte-d'Azur, if for no other reason than that well-bred Britons have been doing so for 200 years. We were the first to apply manners, fashion and decadence to the natural splendour (mountains dropping to the sea; unfiltered light; creeks; you've seen the photos). Glamour remains - the Negresco Hotel in Nice, the Caves-du-Roy night-club in St Tropez - even though, in places, the coast fills up pretty full these days. (What did you expect? You'd have it all to yourself?) The contemporary Azurean talent is, in fact, to project itself as an arty jet-set destination while actually catering for Everyman. Prices need be no more punishing than in Calais. (My favourite restaurant in Nice, the Voyageur Nissart, has full-meal menus from £14.) And out-running the crowds is a cinch. Head for the Corniches des Maures or de l'Esterel, or the hills behind Menton and Nice. The twist of a hairpin spins you from glitz to an older, rockier region where mojitos are things you spray against. How to avoid the crowds in Provence The same is true in Provence. It may be standing-room-only in the cultured A-team towns - Aix, Arles and Avignon - but you stand alone on the Lure mountain, or the Vaucluse Plateau. Naturally, the region slides easily into soft-focus - sensual markets, apéritifs by the pool, Sisteron lamb on a village terrace - but, at base, it's a hard-stone rugged world which has survived worse than tourism. It's tougher yet, and the coast very much flatter, across the Rhône in Languedoc-Roussillon. No-one came here until the 1960s, when France decided it needed its own Costa, to stop French people going to Spain. Fishing ports were adapted uncertainly. New-build holiday resorts went up - notably, La Grande Motte, whose ziggurats and pyramids describe exactly what 1960s planners thought the future would look like. Provence: no other region in Europe, not even Tuscany, has so nourished our dreams and sensual demands Credit: Newmarket Holidays Few would argue that all this is uniformly charming, but the sandy beaches are endless, the sea-food terrific, and few spots on earth have more happy families-per-square-metre than Le Grau-du-Roi or Argelès. The hinterland is quite different, vinelands ceding to sun-roasted hills overlain with garrigue and memories of religious massacre. Meanwhile, the Aquitaine Coast - Soulac down to Hendaye via Cap Ferret, Arcachon and Biarritz - is also flat with infinite beaches, but pounded by the Atlantic. The power renders the Med idle by comparison, tossing surfers about gratifyingly. In the deep south, the Basques may, on occasion, be uppity - but they're brilliant when singing, cooking axoa veal stew or sharing their red and white villages, and green Pyrenean hills. The north Brittany, too, can get out of hand. It did so in autumn 2013, when almost everyone took to the streets to protest about pretty much everything. The Bretons' is a strong identity, fashioned by rocks, onions , the sea and the swirl of Celtic culture - itself wonderful when playing the harp and dancing, but frankly bonkers at its mystical extremes. Both north and south, but especially north - from the Pays-des-Abers to the Pink Granite coast and on to St Malo - the Breton coast stirs like few others. A word of advice, though: Breton crêpes are overrated. Go for the Cancale oysters. It is a serious Breton regret that the Mont-Saint-Michel - the sublime rock-island abbey apparently landed from a more majestic dimension - should be just over the border in Normandy. But the Normans deserve some luck, after the clattering they took in summer 1944. Seventy years on, the D-Day beaches both retain an emotional impact and ring with the laughter of children, which is as it should be. Mont Saint-Michel, Normandy Credit: Getty Pre-war, the Normandy coast was best known for the cliffs at Etretat - sculpted by gods with time on their hands - the Parisian chic of Granville and Deauville, and the presence of almost every Impressionist you care to name. Le Havre and Honfleur overflowed with Monet and similar. But my very favourite Norman slice is the inland Pays-d'Auge, where half-timbered villages punctuate the rich green, double-cream countryside, where there are cows in bountiful pastures, and calvados in my glass. Deepest Burgundy I relax similarly into the greys, greens and gentle slopes of Burgundy - "a landscape of slow civilisation," as someone once said, correctly. The region long ago retired from medieval eminence, both religious and temporal, to play to its real strengths: making great wines, raising Charolais cattle and growing a little portly. Being plump became a duty imposed by history. Especially in the Côtes-de-Nuit and Côtes-de-Beaune, villages ripened by the wine trade seem in permanent readiness for a pageant. Some of the loveliest also line the Nivernais canal - as if painted into place - which makes Burgundy cruising an unexpected pleasure. Canal speeds are about right for the region, too. Life moves slowly in Beaune Credit: Getty And so, south-west to the Dordogne, which is not, as often supposed, a summer-house extension of the Home Counties. Granted, it gets many British visitors, re-taking, gîte by gîte, what we lost in the Hundred Years War. Try getting to Sarlat's Saturday market after 10am and, such is the pressure of visitor cars, you might as well park in Paris. Throngs of canoeists may also turn the Dordogne river into a watery M25. But, as in Provence, a turn of the wheel distances the throngs for a mainly mellow landscape of old-fashioned farming, meaty meals, woodland and arcaded village squares. The place was by-passed for centuries by mainstream France - which is why it now looks so untouched. That said, pre-historic men were jolly content here - notably along the Vézère valley, where they gathered in abundance, and not just to paint on cave walls. A few millennia on, so are we. But (another word of advice): please sort out your attitude to foie gras before arriving. In the Dordogne, it crops up everywhere. The 60 best holidays for 2017 For our pick of the best trips, see our individual sections below: Top 10 beach holidays in France Top 10 activity and adventure holidays in France Top 10 art and culture holidays in France Top 10 villa holidays in France Top 10 food and wine holidays in France Top 10 cruises to France Tour operators For advice on tour operators, see our individual sections below: France summer holiday guide: beach breaks France summer holiday guide: villas and apartments France summer holiday guide: art and culture France summer holiday guide: activity and adventure France summer holiday guide: food and wine France summer holiday guide: cruises The first colour photographs of France Getting there Crossing the Channel For cheapest fares, research and book on operators' websites, and for peak season travel book ahead, especially on longer crossings. Read our full guide to cross-channel ferries to France Eurotunnel (0844 335 3535; eurotunnel.com) The Folkestone-Calais car shuttle train service is the fastest way to cross the Channel, and services are unaffected by the weather. However, fares are generally higher than those offered by the ferry operators on short crossings. P&O Ferries (0871 664 2121; poferries.com) Dover-Calais. DFDS Seaways (0871 574 7235 (for Dover-Calais enquiries); dfdsseaways.co.uk) Dover-Dunkirk, Dover-Calais, Newhaven-Dieppe. Brittany Ferries (0871 244 1400; brittany-ferries.co.uk) Portsmouth to Le Havre, Caen, Cherbourg, St Malo; Poole-Cherbourg; Plymouth to Roscoff and, winter only, to St Malo. Seasonal fastcraft services Portsmouth-Cherbourg; conventional ferries on other routes. Condor Ferries (0845 609 1024; condorferries.com) Fastcraft services from Poole to St Malo via the Channel Islands. Roscoff, Brittany Credit: Boris Stroujko - Fotolia By train Eurostar (eurostar.com) operates year-round services from London and Kent to Paris, Calais, Lille and Disneyland Paris. A new year-round service also operates to Lyon, Avignon and Marseille. Through fares are possible from regional UK stations, and to many other French cities. Voyages-sncf.com (0844 848 5848; voyages-sncf.com), formerly Rail Europe, can book trips combining Eurostar with TGV and local services, any rail journey within France, and French rail passes. For all train journeys, book well ahead for cheapest fares - Eurostar's booking horizon is up to six months on major services (up to nine months for Disneyland Paris). Before booking, refer to seat61.com for invaluable advice on French train travel. The best hotels in France By air Use skyscanner.net for who flies where and fare comparisons. Before booking, also calculate extra charges for checking in bags and so forth. By coach For often cheap fares to Paris, Lille and sometimes other French destinations, contact Eurolines (eurolines.co.uk), Megabus (uk.megabus.com) and OUIBUS (uk.ouibus.com). Getting there advice by Fred Mawer More Telegraph Travel expert guides Follow Telegraph Travel on Twitter France: summer holiday planner

The 60 best holidays in France for 2018

France summer booking guide Beach Villa Culture Food Activity Cruise Planning a holiday to France? Read our guide to the best regions, including expert advice on where to go on the Côte-d'Azur and Aquitaine Coast, in Provence, Languedoc-Roussillon, Brittany, Normandy, Burgundy and the Dordogne as well as the best operators and booking details. By Anthony Peregrine, Telegraph Travel France expert. Click on the tabs above for our expert's picks of the best beach, villa, culture, food and drink, activity and cruise holidays in France. We are reliably schizophrenic about the French. This is understandable. They are both our next-door neighbours, and hereditary foes. Because we live so close, their supposed foibles - arrogance, slipperiness, dubious morality - are amplified. And yet, and yet, we can't keep out of their country. Clearly, and like a classy courtesan, France is so damned seductive that she lures us away from fiercely-held principles. You can see how she might. The most diverse country in Europe runs from celebrated mountains to the continent's finest coast via everything else in-between. Great rivers run hither and yon, forest covers 28 per cent of the landscape and there's hardly anyone about. Amboise, in the Loire Credit: stevanzz - Fotolia More Telegraph Travel expert guides For roughly the same population, France covers more than twice the area of the UK. The few there are have filled the place with the first-class food and wine, châteaux (not all built to fight the English) and variegated culture. In few other countries can you go, as I did four summers ago, from a bull-running festival to major Signac exhibition in under 25 minutes. Villages remain complete unto themselves, rather than urban out-reach communities. They will have proper bakeries. The chain store might still be the ironmonger's. The mayor will take him(her)self very seriously. As importantly, and despite (or because of?) its Jacobin impulse to centralisation, France has retained marked regional identities. The country covers the West European spectrum, from Flemish and Germanic in the north to Latin in the south. You can holiday in a different France every time you go. But how do you choose where? Frances 20 most beautiful villages You might start on the Côte-d'Azur, if for no other reason than that well-bred Britons have been doing so for 200 years. We were the first to apply manners, fashion and decadence to the natural splendour (mountains dropping to the sea; unfiltered light; creeks; you've seen the photos). Glamour remains - the Negresco Hotel in Nice, the Caves-du-Roy night-club in St Tropez - even though, in places, the coast fills up pretty full these days. (What did you expect? You'd have it all to yourself?) The contemporary Azurean talent is, in fact, to project itself as an arty jet-set destination while actually catering for Everyman. Prices need be no more punishing than in Calais. (My favourite restaurant in Nice, the Voyageur Nissart, has full-meal menus from £14.) And out-running the crowds is a cinch. Head for the Corniches des Maures or de l'Esterel, or the hills behind Menton and Nice. The twist of a hairpin spins you from glitz to an older, rockier region where mojitos are things you spray against. How to avoid the crowds in Provence The same is true in Provence. It may be standing-room-only in the cultured A-team towns - Aix, Arles and Avignon - but you stand alone on the Lure mountain, or the Vaucluse Plateau. Naturally, the region slides easily into soft-focus - sensual markets, apéritifs by the pool, Sisteron lamb on a village terrace - but, at base, it's a hard-stone rugged world which has survived worse than tourism. It's tougher yet, and the coast very much flatter, across the Rhône in Languedoc-Roussillon. No-one came here until the 1960s, when France decided it needed its own Costa, to stop French people going to Spain. Fishing ports were adapted uncertainly. New-build holiday resorts went up - notably, La Grande Motte, whose ziggurats and pyramids describe exactly what 1960s planners thought the future would look like. Provence: no other region in Europe, not even Tuscany, has so nourished our dreams and sensual demands Credit: Newmarket Holidays Few would argue that all this is uniformly charming, but the sandy beaches are endless, the sea-food terrific, and few spots on earth have more happy families-per-square-metre than Le Grau-du-Roi or Argelès. The hinterland is quite different, vinelands ceding to sun-roasted hills overlain with garrigue and memories of religious massacre. Meanwhile, the Aquitaine Coast - Soulac down to Hendaye via Cap Ferret, Arcachon and Biarritz - is also flat with infinite beaches, but pounded by the Atlantic. The power renders the Med idle by comparison, tossing surfers about gratifyingly. In the deep south, the Basques may, on occasion, be uppity - but they're brilliant when singing, cooking axoa veal stew or sharing their red and white villages, and green Pyrenean hills. The north Brittany, too, can get out of hand. It did so in autumn 2013, when almost everyone took to the streets to protest about pretty much everything. The Bretons' is a strong identity, fashioned by rocks, onions , the sea and the swirl of Celtic culture - itself wonderful when playing the harp and dancing, but frankly bonkers at its mystical extremes. Both north and south, but especially north - from the Pays-des-Abers to the Pink Granite coast and on to St Malo - the Breton coast stirs like few others. A word of advice, though: Breton crêpes are overrated. Go for the Cancale oysters. It is a serious Breton regret that the Mont-Saint-Michel - the sublime rock-island abbey apparently landed from a more majestic dimension - should be just over the border in Normandy. But the Normans deserve some luck, after the clattering they took in summer 1944. Seventy years on, the D-Day beaches both retain an emotional impact and ring with the laughter of children, which is as it should be. Mont Saint-Michel, Normandy Credit: Getty Pre-war, the Normandy coast was best known for the cliffs at Etretat - sculpted by gods with time on their hands - the Parisian chic of Granville and Deauville, and the presence of almost every Impressionist you care to name. Le Havre and Honfleur overflowed with Monet and similar. But my very favourite Norman slice is the inland Pays-d'Auge, where half-timbered villages punctuate the rich green, double-cream countryside, where there are cows in bountiful pastures, and calvados in my glass. Deepest Burgundy I relax similarly into the greys, greens and gentle slopes of Burgundy - "a landscape of slow civilisation," as someone once said, correctly. The region long ago retired from medieval eminence, both religious and temporal, to play to its real strengths: making great wines, raising Charolais cattle and growing a little portly. Being plump became a duty imposed by history. Especially in the Côtes-de-Nuit and Côtes-de-Beaune, villages ripened by the wine trade seem in permanent readiness for a pageant. Some of the loveliest also line the Nivernais canal - as if painted into place - which makes Burgundy cruising an unexpected pleasure. Canal speeds are about right for the region, too. Life moves slowly in Beaune Credit: Getty And so, south-west to the Dordogne, which is not, as often supposed, a summer-house extension of the Home Counties. Granted, it gets many British visitors, re-taking, gîte by gîte, what we lost in the Hundred Years War. Try getting to Sarlat's Saturday market after 10am and, such is the pressure of visitor cars, you might as well park in Paris. Throngs of canoeists may also turn the Dordogne river into a watery M25. But, as in Provence, a turn of the wheel distances the throngs for a mainly mellow landscape of old-fashioned farming, meaty meals, woodland and arcaded village squares. The place was by-passed for centuries by mainstream France - which is why it now looks so untouched. That said, pre-historic men were jolly content here - notably along the Vézère valley, where they gathered in abundance, and not just to paint on cave walls. A few millennia on, so are we. But (another word of advice): please sort out your attitude to foie gras before arriving. In the Dordogne, it crops up everywhere. The 60 best holidays for 2017 For our pick of the best trips, see our individual sections below: Top 10 beach holidays in France Top 10 activity and adventure holidays in France Top 10 art and culture holidays in France Top 10 villa holidays in France Top 10 food and wine holidays in France Top 10 cruises to France Tour operators For advice on tour operators, see our individual sections below: France summer holiday guide: beach breaks France summer holiday guide: villas and apartments France summer holiday guide: art and culture France summer holiday guide: activity and adventure France summer holiday guide: food and wine France summer holiday guide: cruises The first colour photographs of France Getting there Crossing the Channel For cheapest fares, research and book on operators' websites, and for peak season travel book ahead, especially on longer crossings. Read our full guide to cross-channel ferries to France Eurotunnel (0844 335 3535; eurotunnel.com) The Folkestone-Calais car shuttle train service is the fastest way to cross the Channel, and services are unaffected by the weather. However, fares are generally higher than those offered by the ferry operators on short crossings. P&O Ferries (0871 664 2121; poferries.com) Dover-Calais. DFDS Seaways (0871 574 7235 (for Dover-Calais enquiries); dfdsseaways.co.uk) Dover-Dunkirk, Dover-Calais, Newhaven-Dieppe. Brittany Ferries (0871 244 1400; brittany-ferries.co.uk) Portsmouth to Le Havre, Caen, Cherbourg, St Malo; Poole-Cherbourg; Plymouth to Roscoff and, winter only, to St Malo. Seasonal fastcraft services Portsmouth-Cherbourg; conventional ferries on other routes. Condor Ferries (0845 609 1024; condorferries.com) Fastcraft services from Poole to St Malo via the Channel Islands. Roscoff, Brittany Credit: Boris Stroujko - Fotolia By train Eurostar (eurostar.com) operates year-round services from London and Kent to Paris, Calais, Lille and Disneyland Paris. A new year-round service also operates to Lyon, Avignon and Marseille. Through fares are possible from regional UK stations, and to many other French cities. Voyages-sncf.com (0844 848 5848; voyages-sncf.com), formerly Rail Europe, can book trips combining Eurostar with TGV and local services, any rail journey within France, and French rail passes. For all train journeys, book well ahead for cheapest fares - Eurostar's booking horizon is up to six months on major services (up to nine months for Disneyland Paris). Before booking, refer to seat61.com for invaluable advice on French train travel. The best hotels in France By air Use skyscanner.net for who flies where and fare comparisons. Before booking, also calculate extra charges for checking in bags and so forth. By coach For often cheap fares to Paris, Lille and sometimes other French destinations, contact Eurolines (eurolines.co.uk), Megabus (uk.megabus.com) and OUIBUS (uk.ouibus.com). Getting there advice by Fred Mawer More Telegraph Travel expert guides Follow Telegraph Travel on Twitter France: summer holiday planner

McGregor strikes late as Celtic edge out Zenit

McGregor strikes late as Celtic edge out Zenit

Brendan Rodgers hails Celtic's performance in narrow win over Zenit

Boss Brendan Rodgers has hailed Celtic's display following their 1-0 win over Zenit St Petersburg in the first leg of their Europa League clash at Parkhead. Callum McGregor's 78th-minute strike, after taking a pass from substitute Charly Musonda, gave the Scottish champions an advantage for the second leg of the last-32 tie in Russia.

Brendan Rodgers hails Celtic's performance in narrow win over Zenit

Boss Brendan Rodgers has hailed Celtic's display following their 1-0 win over Zenit St Petersburg in the first leg of their Europa League clash at Parkhead. Callum McGregor's 78th-minute strike, after taking a pass from substitute Charly Musonda, gave the Scottish champions an advantage for the second leg of the last-32 tie in Russia.

Brendan Rodgers hails Celtic's performance in narrow win over Zenit

Boss Brendan Rodgers has hailed Celtic's display following their 1-0 win over Zenit St Petersburg in the first leg of their Europa League clash at Parkhead. Callum McGregor's 78th-minute strike, after taking a pass from substitute Charly Musonda, gave the Scottish champions an advantage for the second leg of the last-32 tie in Russia.

Brendan Rodgers hails Celtic's performance in narrow win over Zenit

Boss Brendan Rodgers has hailed Celtic's display following their 1-0 win over Zenit St Petersburg in the first leg of their Europa League clash at Parkhead. Callum McGregor's 78th-minute strike, after taking a pass from substitute Charly Musonda, gave the Scottish champions an advantage for the second leg of the last-32 tie in Russia.

Brendan Rodgers hails Celtic's performance in narrow win over Zenit

Brendan Rodgers hails Celtic's performance in narrow win over Zenit

Brendan Rodgers hails Celtic's performance in narrow win over Zenit

Brendan Rodgers hails Celtic's performance in narrow win over Zenit

First-leg win gives Celtic 'a wonderful opportunity', says Rodgers

First-leg win gives Celtic 'a wonderful opportunity', says Rodgers

First-leg win gives Celtic 'a wonderful opportunity', says Rodgers

Celtic have a lead to take to Zenit, but Brendan Rodgers does not believe their Europa League tie is over yet.